Peter Dimov wrote:
You can (and should) use the same scoping mechanism with strings. Every C++ type has a string representation. Instead of class N::X, you can use "N::X" or the more natural "N.X".
If you use the same "N.X" string for two distinct purposes, there will be a problem; but you can also use the same N::X type for two different purposes, and the compiler will not warn. Strings require a bit more discipline, but not much.
you are correct, but pls. note that strings provide these benefits only when used as literals, when compiler cannot be used to enforce discipline. I believe that in many larger project (where many developers are working on single sourcetree and names are referred from many files) this is often non-acceptable and some means to organize names will be needed. Devising such means for strings is (at least) troublesome, while for tags it is straightforward. Tags naturally suit to source code organization. How exactly these tags should be organized is separate issue - I think that they should not belong to exception hierarchy (nor their header files) but form separate utility (header or set of headers) providing specific pieces of information about program state. I'd also guess that such header(s) will contain other entities (helper functions or classes) specific to given piece of information about program state. B.