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Comment by throwawaymaths

15 days ago

modules are struct namespaces, so they create a compile time type.

modules (might not mean the same as module in any other given lang) ⊂ imports ⊂ structs ⊂ namespaces ⊂ types

5 comments

throwawaymaths

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mort96  14 days ago

Right, that's what I thought. So object member lookup and module/namespace lookup are not the same thing

  • throwawaymaths  14 days ago

    Depends. Your module can have top level member fields or declarations. (By convention these modules would be capitalized) and in that case it would be instantiated as a struct (no objects in zig)

    MyModule.zig

       somefield: u32,

   fn get(self: @This()) u32 {
      return this.somefield;
   }

    main.zig

       const Module = @import("MyModule"); // note there are build parameters necessary to make this a module

   fn main() void {
     var x: Module = .{.somefield = 42 };

     _ = x.get() // => 42

     ...

    A module is an import external to your project. Whether or not the import has top level fields or declarations, the mechanism is the same for structs, imports, and modules. For all imports (including modules) you should imagine an implicit `struct{...}` expression surrounding the code in your file.

    • mort96  13 days ago

      I don't understand why you're repeating this. The module is a struct, not an object. That means that in Zig, module lookup and object member lookup are different things. A module is not an object, it is a struct, so looking something up in a module is not looking up a member in an object.

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