RMS on why Emacs lisp doesn't have namespace

Re: Generators (iterators) for Gnu Emacs

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From:	Richard Stallman
Subject:	Re: Generators (iterators) for Gnu Emacs
Date:	Mon, 08 Dec 2014 15:59:22 -0500

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  > I wonder whether perhaps Richard ran into the need to use prefixes

  > so much because he was implementing the CL package system, and not

  > just making normal use of it.  Just a conjecture.



I implemented all the Common Lisp features (of which the package

system was one) in the Lisp Machine operating system, which included

lots of programs to do lots of things.  (An Emacs-like editor was one

of them.)



In practice, the goal of using names without prefixes via importing

namespace did not work out.



I make the conjecture that name space importing is convenient when you

have lots of small modules, each with its own name space and not many

names, and each referring to just a few other modules.  That's not how

the Lisp Machine system was written, and it's also mostly not how

Emacs was written.



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Dr Richard Stallman

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