Re: [Chicken-hackers] Regarding the hide declaration, #1376

[megane]

address@hidden writes:

>
> Hi!
>
>
> Sorry, I'm  rather late to this discussion, and I apologize for that. But 
> note that
> the whole idea to extend the hide declaration for unexporting from modules is
> bogus. Declarations work at a completely different level, and aren't even 
> aware
> of syntax-bindings, IIRC. If you want to make a module-level identifier not 
> visible,
> then just remove it from the export list. If you are forced to use "*", then 
> a special
> form (like "unexport") would be better. Declarations are not the right place 
> for
> this.

Hi!

First, let me ramble some:

1. If you hide an exported identifier the compiler is free to drop the
actual definition from the compiled object. This happens without any
warnings currently and you get a runtime error if you try to use the
identifier.

2. If an identifier is not exported I think it's safe to declare it hidden.

3. As you see from the tests, the patch I provided seems to work as it's
supposed to. That is, it unexports identifiers using the hide
declaration. None of my code broke when I recompiled all eggs I'm using.
Just FYI.

Second:

I think there should be a way to remove identifiers from the module export
list. I'm happy to try adding an unexport syntax form if that's a good
idea (that's why I started this thread).