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In general, a namespace is an abstract container providing context for the items ( Name s, or Technical Term s, or Word s) it holds and allows disambiguation of items having the same name (residing in different namespaces).

As a rule, names in a namespace cannot have more than one meaning, that is, two or more things cannot share the same name. A namespace is also called a Context , as the valid meaning of a name can change depending on what namespace applies. Names in it can represent objects as well as Concept , whether it is a natural or ethnic language, a Constructed Language , the Technical Terminology of a profession, a Dialect , a Sociolect , or an artificial language (e.g., a Programming Language )....

For many programming languages, a Namespace is a context for Identifier s. In an operating system, an example of namespace is a directory. It contains items which must have unique names. In the Java Programming Language , items that appear in namespaces have a short (local) name and unique long "qualified" names for use outside the name space. Also, some languages (such as C) combine namespace and names in a process called ''' Name Mangling ''' in order to eradicate ambiguity.


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