Removing Qualified Names in Modular Languages

Abstract

Although the notion of qualified names is popular in module systems, it causes severe complications. In this paper, we propose an alternative to qualified names. The key idea is to import the declarations in other modules to the current module before they are used. In this way, all the declarations can be accessed locally. However, this approach is not efficient in memory usage. Our contribution is the {\it module weakening} scheme which allows us to import the minimal parts. As an example of this approach, we propose a module system for functional languages.