[GROOVY-367] Consider with() block/statement for "importing" methods into a namespace

• Type: Wish
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Fix Version/s: 1.0-JSR-4
• Assignee: Jochen Theodorou
• Reporter: Chris Poirier
• Created: 06/Apr/04 19:18
• Updated: 15/Nov/05 08:12
• Resolved: 15/Nov/05 08:12

Description

For long variable names, it might be useful to have a with() block-oriented statement for doing naming.

ie.:
longVariableName.x();
longVariableName.y();
longVariableName.property.z();

becomes:
with( longVariableName )
{
x();
y();
property.z();
}

A global statement version could be used to import names and objects.

with java.lang.Math;

would have the effect of making all the Math.* fields and methods accessible without offset. That said, "import" might be the better keyword to use, in this case.

There is a possibility that with() {} could be implemented as a closure, but I think a bare language feature would be more useful, as it is just syntactic sugar, and shouldn't incur any runtime penalty.