Robert, Apologies for snipping the rest of your post. The thing is I agree with all you say, the reason I am replying to the snippet below is to try to explain myself. Best, V.
Consider what can be extremely common:
void f() { using boost::<something>::from; ... std::string s(from(i)); ... s = from(j); // etc. }
"from" is not as meaningful. That name almost requires retaining the enclosing namespace or a namespace alias.
... It is clearly a bad practice. The solution is *not* to deploy it.
Wow! I thought we were being reasonable until this point. Apparently, I'm a horrible developer and clearly do bad things. In case my sarcasm isn't obvious, I do not accept your criticism of what I showed in the example. It *is not* bad practice.
Well, I obviously was not very successful arguing my point, was I? :-) Somehow cramming a view into a sentence or two brings the results exactly opposite to anticipated. My humble apologies (I never meant to imply anything "horrible") and please let me try again. I feel that our good vs. bad are relative. Namely, within the scope of your example it is clearly good. I interpret the example above as the programmer saying -- why formalities amongst friends, call me Rob. And that clearly works wonderfully as in your example with "Dad" as it does not lead to ambiguities. In that context I personally do not feel that in your example "from" is any less meaningful -- I have the "using" directive right in front of me and even without it I cannot resist but read "std::string s(from(i));" just as it is written -- "string s from i". I can't really think of anything else apart from what it *actually* does. Having said that, as calling "Dad" in a crowd is likely to turn a few heads, deploying using something-long something-short; typedef something-long something-short; within a bigger scope it is likely to lead to ambiguities and confusion. The bigger the scope the less meaningful is "from", i.e. doing so should (IMHO) be avoided. And that IMHO is not limited to this particular "from". *That* is what I referred as bad practice (I am guilty of interpreting your example too liberally). Again, please accept my humblest apologies for my clumsy attempt to explain my position. I am hoping I managed it better this time. V.