RE: [External] : Re: But then what are namespaces ? (was: A read-based grep-like for symbols (el-search?) (was Do shorthands break basic tooling (tags, grep, etc)? (was Re: Shorthands have landed on master)))

[Drew Adams]

FWIW (OT) -

There are statements in this thread such as these:

> Elisp has a single namespace

> all languages have a single global namespace,
  and languages with namespaces have a single
  global namespace that is partitioned

> a unique global namespace

This is off-topic, but I just wanted to remind
us that Elisp does have multiple "namespaces",
in a particular sense.

I won't argue that obarrays are namespaces in
the usual senses we think of - import/export
combination etc.  But in one sense they really
do provide for multiple sets/spaces of names.

Those sets are completely separate.  They have
nothing to do with short/relative/unqualified
names vs long/absolute/qualified names.  But
they can be quite handy for some purposes.

Emacs abbrevs use obarrays.  My little library
`synonyms.el' uses an obarray for the words in
the thesaurus.  And `completing-read' can use
obarrays.

https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Synonyms

(Now back to your regularly scheduled broadcast...)