Names

5.3 Names

Identifiers are used to give names to several classes of language objects and refer to these objects by name later:

value names (syntactic class value-name),
value constructors (constant -- class cconstr-name -- or non-constant -- class ncconstr-name),
type constructors (typeconstr-name),
record labels (label-name),
class names (class-name),
method names (method-name),
instance variable names (inst-var-name),
module names (module-name),
module type names (modtype-name).

These nine name spaces are distinguished both by the context and by the capitalization of the identifier: whether the first letter of the identifier is in lowercase (written lowercase-ident below) or in uppercase (written capitalized-ident). Underscore is considered a lowercase letter for this purpose.

Naming objects

`value-name`	::=	`lowercase-ident`
	\|	`(` `operator-name` `)`
`operator-name`	::=	`prefix-symbol` \| `infix-symbol` \| `*` \| `=` \| `or` \| `&` \| `:=`
`cconstr-name`	::=	`capitalized-ident`
	\|	`false`
	\|	`true`
	\|	`[` `]`
	\|	`(` `)`
`ncconstr-name`	::=	`capitalized-ident`
	\|	`::`
`typeconstr-name`	::=	`lowercase-ident`
`label-name`	::=	`lowercase-ident`
`module-name`	::=	`capitalized-ident`
`modtype-name`	::=	`ident`
`class-name`	::=	`lowercase-ident`
`inst-var-name`	::=	`lowercase-ident`
`method-name`	::=	`lowercase-ident`

As shown above, prefix and infix symbols as well as some keywords can be used as value names, provided they are written between parentheses. Keywords such as '::' and 'false' are also constructor names. The capitalization rules are summarized in the table below.

Name space	Case of first letter
Values	lowercase
Constructors	uppercase
Type constructors	lowercase
Record labels	lowercase
Classes	lowercase
Methods	lowercase
Modules	uppercase
Module types	any

Referring to named objects

`value-path`	::=	`value-name`
	\|	`module-path` `.` `lowercase-ident`
`cconstr`	::=	`cconstr-name`
	\|	`module-path` `.` `capitalized-ident`
`ncconstr`	::=	`ncconstr-name`
	\|	`module-path` `.` `capitalized-ident`
`typeconstr`	::=	`typeconstr-name`
	\|	`extended-module-path` `.` `lowercase-ident`
`label`	::=	`label-name`
	\|	`module-path` `.` `lowercase-ident`
`module-path`	::=	`module-name`
	\|	`module-path` `.` `capitalized-ident`
`extended-module-path`	::=	`module-name`
	\|	`extended-module-path` `.` `capitalized-ident`
	\|	`extended-module-path` `(` `extended-module-path` `)`
`modtype-path`	::=	`modtype-name`
	\|	`extended-module-path` `.` `ident`
`class-path`	::=	`class-name`
	\|	`module-path` `.` `lowercase-ident`

A named object can be referred to either by its name (following the usual static scoping rules for names) or by an access path prefix . name, where prefix designates a module and name is the name of an object defined in that module. The first component of the path, prefix, is either a simple module name or an access path name₁ . name₂ ..., in case the defining module is itself nested inside other modules. For referring to type constructors or module types, the prefix can also contain simple functor applications (as in the syntactic class extended-module-path above), in case the defining module is the result of a functor application.

Instance variable names and method names need not be qualified: the former are local to a class while the latter are global labels.