Name visibility
A problem in any programming language is the control of names. If you use a name in one module of the program, and another programmer uses the same name in another module, how do you distinguish one name from another and prevent the two names from “clashing?” In C this is a particular problem because a program is often an unmanageable sea of names. C++ classes (on which Java classes are based) nest functions within classes so they cannot clash with function names nested within other classes. However, C++ still allows global data and global functions, so clashing is still possible. To solve this problem, C++ introduced namespaces using additional keywords.
Java was able to avoid all of this by taking a fresh approach. To produce an unambiguous name for a library, the specifier used is not unlike an Internet domain name. In fact, the Java creators want you to use your Internet domain name in reverse since those are guaranteed to be unique. Since my domain name is BruceEckel.com, my utility library of foibles would be named com.bruceeckel.utility.foibles. After your reversed domain name, the dots are intended to represent subdirectories.
In Java 1.0 and Java 1.1 the domain extensions com, edu, org, net, etc., were capitalized by convention, so the library would appear: COM.bruceeckel.utility.foibles. Partway through the development of Java 2, however, it was discovered that this caused problems, so now the entire package name is lowercase.
This mechanism means that all of your files automatically live in their own namespaces, and each class within a file must have a unique identifier. So you do not need to learn special language features to solve this problem—the language takes care of it for you.
