[moca] How important is restriction?

[Luis Rodrigo Gallardo <lrgallardo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello.

I am currently working on a Masters Thesis project to draft a
programming language that incorporates the ideas from mobile ambients,
in order to try to test them in 'real life'.

So far the proposal is to allow the proceses inside each ambient to be
expressed in a regular imperative language. Instead of trying to
design my own I will be using Python. Then I'm trying to code the AC
inside my language, to get some sort of design validation.

But on doing this I have bumped against a problem: Python is a
block-structured language without variable declarations. That means
that all names are local by default. (Or am I wrong here?) This is
something I want to keep.

But names in the AC are, in a sense, global by default, unless
restricted explicitely.

So, the question is: How much would I lose if I changed AC to have all
names' scopes restricted by default to some local context in each
process, and only allowing external references by some sort of
'importing' mechanism.

My feeling is that, at least from a 'practical' point of view, not
much would be lost, but I don't yet have enough understanding of the
theory to be able to assert that with confidence.

Thanks.

  
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