Re: [TCLCORE] Another path to case-tolerant package names

[Donald G P. <dg...@ni...>]

Jan Nijtmans wrote:
> I am stubborn enough to experiment with a solution that doesn't need
> a second hash table. 

I think I spoke unclearly before.  The real constraint I had
imposed on myself was to achieve what was needed completely at
script level.  Essentially prove that the existing [package]
command was flexible enough (with minimal recasting in ensemble
form) to provide the desired function.  That limitation implies
sticking to one table, but that's not all.

Certainly dropping into C and changing the structures held in
the table, one can achieve what's needed without a second hash table.

> The resulting patch is available at:
> https://sourceforge.net/tracker2/?func=detail&aid=2432057&group_id=10894&atid=310894
> but I'll outline the idea here.

The patch crashes in the test suite.  Not commit ready.

> The idea is, not trying to make package handling case-insensitive, but
> in stead only handle the situation that someone provides a package
> "FooBar" and we want to make it available under the name "foobar"
> as well. 

Ok, so fundamentally the approach is leave [package] unchanged in its
most internal details -- keep it as a fundamentally case sensitive
system -- but add on just enough more to provide illusion of
case insensitivity as a crutch for folks more comfortable with that.
If it worked, I think I could accept that.

However, it doesn't currently work, so I'll mention that I think the
opposite aim would be better.  The momentum as I perceive it is that
package names should have been case insensitive, and packages should
have always been provided all lowercase, and we'd be best to move to a
scheme that in its fundamentals is a case insensitive system, with the
addition of just enough more so that we break as little existing
code as we can.  Then, if the aim is for [package] in, say Tcl 9,
to really become completely case insensitive, we've built a better
bridge to that endpoint.

I have some ideas how to do that, but I don't have a patch to offer,
and I don't know when I can promise time to produce one.  So, if
patch 2432057 can get corrected quickly, I'll defer to that.

-- 
| Don Porter          Mathematical and Computational Sciences Division |
| don...@ni...             Information Technology Laboratory |
| http://math.nist.gov/~DPorter/                                  NIST |
|______________________________________________________________________|