Ion keyword clash

[tjpalmer]

Some identifiers used in the ion c compiler are reserved words in ion, such as var or import. When controlling a whole api, this can be worked around by changing the identifier name. However, if someone needed to use a third-party api with naming conflicts, they'd have to make adapters in c before they could use it.

It might be worth making some escape mechanism (like a prefix such as $identifier) for such cases.

An added complexity is that this would allow expression of any identifier name in ion, which could then break a c back end, so I guess the c back end would then need to have a way to change those identifiers to some safe word.

[aameen951]

If I understand correctly, you can already handle that in ion like this:

@foreign("import") 
func lib_import(...);

However, it is not okay for a C library to export a name without a prefix especially if it is a generic name like var and import because there aren't namespaces in C.