use some::Trait as _;

[arcnmx]

mini/pre RFC

use some::Trait as _;

This would allow importing a trait into scope for resolution reasons, without being able to reference it by ident directly.

Motivation

I've found a need for use some::Trait as __Trait; in order to avoid conflicts with another type in scope. It tends to come up when dealing with abstractions and wrappers that have similar type names.

Alternatives

• Some other syntax? I feel like this choice meshes well with Rust in general.
• Not doing this at all. Is it necessary/useful enough to warrant the minor language change?
• Workarounds in current rust:
  • use some::Trait as __Trait;
  • UFCS: use some; some::Trait::method(etc);
  • Using names like TraitImp for your concrete types instead.

Unresolved Questions

Wildcard version? use some::* as _ could work well for importing preludes.

Allow use with pub to make them available for constructing preludes?

Actual design? A simple approach might be to simply implement this as sugar for mangling the trait name in some way (ideally with the full path of the module to accomodate for pub exporting). A real implementation would make them truly hidden as identifiers, but otherwise usable for deciding whether a trait is applicable.

Would this be valid for non-trait types such as structures, type aliases, etc? I'd imagine the wildcard case would simply ignore them, but the explicit syntax would be weird and useless.

[pnkfelix]

yes yes yes!

[wthrowe]

If these can be public and glob imports match them they would be nice for preludes. I imagine they would have been used for std::prelude::v1::SliceConcatExt, for example.

[arcnmx]

@wthrowe good point, I like that suggestion.

[nrc]

+1, this would be nice to have.

cc @jseyfried, @petrochenkov, @nikomatsakis

[jseyfried]

Also +1, I like this idea.

One potential downside is extra complexity for rustdoc when displaying reexported unnameable traits, but otherwise I think this would be straightforward to implement (I'd be happy to prototype it).

[petrochenkov]

Looks reasonable.

[strega-nil]

cc me

[nikomatsakis]

Yeah, I am 👍 on this basic idea.

[pwoolcoc]

I was just looking into this today, glad someone beat me to it

[briansmith]

I feel like this doesn't work well for the use xxx:prelude::* style that is common. I think it might be better to add a hiding {names} syntax like Haskell has instead. Then you could do use xxx::prelude::* hiding TraitName.

[jseyfried]

@briansmith
If you hid a trait using a Haskell-like hiding, I would expect the trait not to be "in scope" for method resolution purposes. A major motivation of as _ is that the trait's name would not be in scope, but the trait would still be in scope for method resolution.

n.b. After #1560 is done (c.f. rust-lang/rust#35894), we won't need hiding.
With #1560, if a glob-imported name conflicts with an item or an explicit import, the glob-imported name is shadowed. If a glob-imported name conflicts with another glob-imported name, the user can add an explicit import to disambiguate (which the compiler will prompt):

mod a { pub fn f() {} }
mod b { pub fn f() {} }
fn main() {
    use a::*;
    use b::*;
    f(); // This is an error, since `f` could be `a::f` or `b::f`.
    // use a::f; // uncommenting this fixes the error.
    //^ Adding this is analogous to appending `hiding {f}` to `use b::*;`.
}

[petrochenkov]

the trait's name would not be in scope, but the trait would still be in scope for method resolution

I wonder if the opposite behavior is ever useful - the trait's name is in scope, but the trait doesn't participate in method/ufcs-path resolution.

[nikomatsakis]

I have never actually wanted this behavior, but I can imagine
wanting it. For example, I might want to mostly use methods from trait
A, but a few methods from trait B -- I can import trait B and use its
methods via UFCS form, while avoiding conflicts with trait A.

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 02:09:24AM -0700, Vadim Petrochenkov wrote:

the trait's name would not be in scope, but the trait would still be in scope for method resolution

I wonder if the opposite behavior is ever useful - the trait's name is in scope, but the trait doesn't participate in method/ufcs-path resolution.

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[nikomatsakis]

Definitely a way to omit specific names from glob would be useful.

On Tue, Aug 23, 2016 at 07:01:18PM -0700, Brian Smith wrote:

I feel like this doesn't work well for the use xxx:prelude::* style that is common. I think it might be better to add a hiding {names} syntax like Haskell has instead. Then you could do use xxx::prelude::* hiding TraitName.

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