The public qualifier

Once a source file has been compiled, the identifiers used to designate the objects of the model become useless for Mosel. In order to access information after a model has been executed (for instance using the print command of the interractive debugger), a table of symbols is saved in the BIM file.

The qualifier public can be used in declaration and definition of objects to mark those identifiers (including subroutines) that must be published in the table of symbols. Without this qualifier a symbol is considered to be private and it is not recorded in the table of symbols (unless the source is compiled with debugging information).

public declarations
  e:integer                                 ! e is published
  f:integer                                 ! f is published
end-declarations

declarations
  public a,b,c:integer                      ! a,b and c are published
  d:real                                    ! d is private
end-declarations

forward public procedure myproc(i:integer)  ! 'myproc' is published

This qualifier can also be used when declaring record types in order to select the fields of the record that can be accessed from outside of the file making the definitions: this allows to make available only a few fields of a record, hidding what is considered to be internal data.

declarations
 public t1=record
     i:integer            ! t1.i is private
     public j:real        ! t1.j is public
    end-record
 public t2=public record
     i:integer            ! t2.i is public
     j:real               ! t2.j is public
    end-record
end-declarations

Note that a public record type can only contain public types even if it does not publish its fields.