[Oberon] Module aliases - what is the correct way to handle them

[Diego Sardina]

On Fri, Feb 14, 2020, at 8:02 AM, Andreas Pirklbauer wrote:
> Hi Paul,
> 
> Some additional comments:
> 
> 
> 1. First, some history: For decades I was secretely hoping that module 
> aliases would one day go way from the language and that I therefore 
> would ever have to expend scarce brain cycles on such an uninteresting 
> topic. But they didn’t go away - some people seem to find them useful. 
> 

Unfortunately I don't have much time to follow this topic. I didn't read all
the posts, so maybe someone already mentioned this.

Import aliasing is a good way to manage multiple implementations, for
example if one has Stacks64, Stacks128, Stacks256, Stacks512, the import
would be:

IMPORT Stacks := Stacks64;

it's easier to change the implementation by modifying only that line of code
instead of replacing code in the whole text.

Also some compiler extensions may implement parametric modules and that
would allow arguments like:

IMPORT Stacks := Stacks(64);

Just for the record, Modula-3 implements generic modules via import aliasing.

Removing them is not a good idea in my opinion.

--
Diego Sardina