Class Name Conflicts....?

OK,

so here's a classic.... i've got a mathematics library, and its got a class called 'Point3d' and it represents a point in 3d space, and i have other code in the library that depends on it, for instance, Vertex3d etc.

so i get my mate to write a library that does some other 3dish type things... and he's got a class called 'Point3d' that is different from mine.... and it's in his namespace 'davelib'.

now, i write a piece of code that needs to use BOTH Point3d classes, one from my library and own from davelib... BUT we end up with compilation errors, 'Point3d is ambiguous', which it obviously is...

so the question is: is there a way to resolve this someway without renaming the classes in one of the libraries...? or are we in for a real pain in the ........?

thanks in advance
dug.

In the code that uses both classes, make sure that you don't put using namespace davelib;. Instead, whenever you need to use his class, just put davelib::Point3d.

Of course, it would be even better if your code was also in a namespace, then you could always specify which one you were referring to. As it is, there are still some instances where the compiler might get confused, like functions with the same name in each library that take Point3d objects as arguments, but they are pretty rare.

it was the combination of:

using namespace ashlib;
&
ashlib::Point3d.whatever();

that was the problem....

nice one, thanks.

You could also coordinate your effort and write one common Point3D class.

you're a genius...

but uh, this is obviously a very simplified example of what we're doing.... and i thought i would generalise the case and the problem so that others would be able to learn from it quite easily, without being swamped in detail.

but yes, obviously that would be a sensible solution.... but not practical in EVERY situation.