what's so difficult about namespace?

[Xah Lee]

Xah Lee wrote:
> > i cannot fathom what could possibly be difficult of
> > introducing or implementing a namespace mechanism into a language. I
> > do not understand, why so many languages that lacks so much needed
> > namespace for so long? If it is a social problem, i don't imagine they
> > would last so long. It must be some technical issue?

On Nov 26, 8:06 am, Wojtek <nowh... at a.com> wrote:
> Simply put:
> - it was not in the original language specification
> - some hundreds of millions of distributed browsers interpret
> Javascript without namespaces
> - to introduce namespaces into the language would require every browser
> to be replaced (at least if the user comes across a site which uses it)
>
> The IT community has enough trouble getting a few ISPs to upgrade their
> DNS software. How are you going to get millions of general users to
> upgrade?
>
> Web stats show that people are still using IE 5...

alright, that's speaks for Javascript.

But how's that apply to, say, Scheme lisp, Emacs lisp, PHP?

In the case of Scheme, i can see that the problem of delay in
introducing namespace is due to the nature of community wanting some
consensus on the most elegant approach.

For emacs lisp, is it prolonged lack of namespace due to lack of
developer resource?

in anycase, the reasons above are social ones. Namely, issues like
backward compatibility, agreement on design, lack of developers. I'd
be very interested if any compiler writer can give technical
perspective on whether introducing namespace to a existing lang is a
problem.

  Xah
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄