Go: proposal: Go 2: list symbols that don't require package name

[99yun]

Problem:

In many case, the last word of the import path is not the real package name. So, it is kind of confusing here ! And write the package name over and over is not the best way to write or read code.

So I bring a proposal:

Proposal1:

import (
    "bufio"
    "encoding/binary"
    "fmt"
    "hash/adler32"
    "io" {Reader IOReader} //Give a new name
    "os"

    "github.com/hashicorp/raft" {RPCHeader, WithRPCHeader} //import multi 
)

No new keywords come in, no break code.

Proposal2:

Proposal1 is probably confusing and not accepted commonly.

import  "bufio"
import  "encoding/binary"
import  "fmt"
import  "os"
import  "hash/adler32"
import  {Reader as IOReader} from  "io"  //Give a new name

import  {RPCHeader, WithRPCHeader} from "github.com/hashicorp/raft" 

This is totally copied from TypeScript

[bronze1man]

One problem in your suggest:

If follow three cases in the same project, there will be a burden for the code reader and make it harder to copy and paste small part of code between files:

• rename io.Reader to IOReader in A file
• rename io.Reader to IoReader in B file
• use it with io.Reader in C file

[rocket049]

I oppose.

[99yun]

@bronze1man Thank you, but I don't think that is a problem.

[ianlancetaylor]

Related to #29036.

[ianlancetaylor]

You can get a similar effect by writing, after the imports,

type IOReader = io.Reader

(For a function, use a var. Admittedly there is no simple way to alias an exported package-scope variable, but those are not commonly used.)

The requirement of writing a package name is not a major complaint about Go. In fact, many people think it is a feature. I'm not sure it's worth changing the language to add a shorter way of doing something that you can already do, and that not a lot of people want to do anyhow.

Speaking only for myself.

[99yun]

@ianlancetaylor Thank you. But I don't think it is a feature and the shorter way of coding is great.

[yekhlakov]

Maybe it would be better to just allow omission of package name for all symbols that can be resolved unambiguously. Like so:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
)

// this shadows fmt.Print
func Print(x string) {
}

func main() {
    Println("Hello world") // instead of fmt.Println
    Print("local") // this package's Print is used
    fmt.Print("import") // package is specified explicitly
}

[99yun]

@yekhlakov Hello, I like that too. But trust me they will never let that happen!

[ianlancetaylor]

As discussed above, there are other way to do this. We don't need a new syntax for it. And this proposal does not have strong support based on emoji voting. Therefore, this is a likely decline. Leaving open for four weeks for further comments.

[ianlancetaylor]

There were no further comments.