On 11 October 2016 at 15:47, Helmut Eller <eller.helmut@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 10 2016, Richard Stallman wrote:
>
> > The reason namespaces systems do not fit well into Lisp
> > is that they have to operate in 'read', in the choice of which
> > symbol object you get.
>
> I would say that namespaces manage symbols.  In contrast, modules manage
> bindings.
>

That's an interesting way of putting it.


> The annoyance in Common Lisp is mostly that packages have to exist
> before READ can intern symbols in a particular package.  That would be
> problematic for autoload cookies or customizations in .emacs which are
> commonly executed before loading the code that actually defines the
> package.
>

That can be dealt with by transparently creating a package during READ.
Common Lisp doesn't do this, but it can be argued that it should.


> The other annoyance in Common Lisp is that occasionally one gets name
> conflict errors when importing a package because a symbol was
> accidentally interned in the current package with READ.  People then
> often get confused by the error message and quickly jump to the
> conclusion that the package system must suck.  It's in fact a pilot
> error and the package system just does its job of keeping the namespace
> clean.
>

What I do is simply never importing symbols from other packages. If I need
to refer to a symbol in a different package, I always fully qualify it.

If a package system was implemented in Emacs Lisp, it would make sense to
enforce this.

Elias