Scope of Keywords

Proposal Details

• Who Updates: JimLewis
• Date Proposed:30 Mar 2014
• Date Last Updated: 30 Mar 2014
• Priority: Low
• Complexity: High
• Focus: Language

Current Situation

Currently keywords are in a separate name space from identifiers.

Proposal

Allow identifiers to overload keywords.

• As we add language keywords to the language it becomes likely that we will collide with a name already used in a design.
• For example, the natural keyword to use for record IO mode declarations is "mode"
• Should we consider giving all names including keywords scope and include keywords in the outer most region such that if someone uses a new keyword as a name in their design, the local definition of the name has scope over the keyword.

Use Cases

Arguments Against

Will increase compiler complexity significantly - may be a bad idea

General Comments

Supporters

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