the use of namespaces

[aart-jan]

I am wondering what is the use of the mangle and unmangle vi's from OpenG. I know they can add or stip a namespace from the vi name, turning name.vi into name__namespace.vi.

Is this useful just to be able to recognize what software the vi belongs to, or is there other intentions?

Thanks!

[Jim Kring]

Let's imagine that OpenG has a function called "Trim Whitespace.vi" and NI thinks that it is so great, that they rip-off also create a function called "Trim Whitespace.vi" and ship it as part of LabVIEW, in vi.lib. Now, any time that someone opens a project that uses the OpenG version of "Trim Whitespace.vi" it could potentially relink to the NI version. This is a very bad scenario, in more ways than one. We can fix this problem by name-mangling all of our VIs prior to shipping them. Then there is no possibility that the VIs will accidentally relink to other VIs of the same name. This is actually a common practice and people have been doing it for a very long time -- commonly adding a prefix, such as "COMPONENTNAME FunctionName.vi".

[aart-jan]

Very good reason! thanks Jim. I think I may apply it to my user.lib VI's as well as projects.

[WMassey]

Let's imagine that OpenG has a function called "Trim Whitespace.vi" and NI thinks that it is so great, that they rip-off also create a function called "Trim Whitespace.vi" and ship it as part of LabVIEW, in vi.lib.

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: I wondered how this came to be! That's a great piece of trivia.

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I guess that means NI likes the OpenG work.

Next thing we know NI will be trying to acquire it and sell it (all of OpenG) as their own.