namespace import?-force? ?pattern pattern ...?Imports commands into a namespace. Each pattern is a qualified name like foo::x or a::p*. That is, it includes the name of an exporting namespace and may have glob-style special characters in the command name at the end of the qualified name. Glob characters may not appear in a namespace name. All the commands that match a pattern string and which are currently exported from their namespace are added to the current namespace. This is done by creating a new command in the current namespace that points to the exported command in its original namespace; when the new imported command is called, it invokes the exported command. This command normally returns an error if an imported command conflicts with an existing command. However, if the -force option is given, imported commands will silently replace existing commands. The namespace import command has snapshot semantics: that is, only requested commands that are currently defined in the exporting namespace are imported. In other words, you can import only the commands that are in a namespace at the time when the namespace import command is executed. If another command is defined and exported in this namespace later on, it will not be imported.
escargo 4 Dec 2006 - I tested this to see what namespace import returns, and it didn't return anything. There are two behaviors that I think might be useful that aren't implemented.
Have namespace import return a list of the commands that are imported. Right now I don't see any easy way to determine what gets imported. (DKF: This is what 8.5 now does, BTW.) (What Tip 261 specifies is the behavior with no arguments. That's not quite what I'm suggesting.)
Alternatively, have namespace import take another parameter (-asif maybe) that tells the import to just return the names of what would be imported and to not do the actual import.
My motivation has to do with Nagelfar, actually. The second option would allow a code analyzer to follow along with "package require" and "namespace import" to discover code that would be known to the code being analyzed. This would allow reduction of false positives for unknown commands.
