Cannot call non-exported string macro using dot

[simonbyrne]

A simple example:

module Foo
    macro bar_str(s)
        s
    end
end

Then:

julia> Foo.bar"aa"
ERROR: UndefVarError: bar not defined

The parser interprets this as implicit multiplication:

julia> macroexpand(:(Foo.bar"aa"))
:(Foo.bar * "aa")

Is this something we can change, or is it too baked into the parser?

[Keno]

+1, this should be changed for consistency with

julia> module foo
       macro bar(x)
       println(x)
       end
       end
foo

julia> @foo.bar 1
1

[JeffBezanson]

This can be changed in the parser, fairly easily I think.

[JeffBezanson]

Though one wonders if we really want more ways to call un-exported things. Maybe you should have to write @Foo.bar_str("x")?

[simonbyrne]

My use case is in RCall. We have a @rimport which creates a new module mirroring the R namespace, however R frequently uses dots in names. I have a string macro var which allows for use of names with dots in them, so I want to write something like:

@rimport base as rbase
rbase.var"as.data.frame"(x)

[JeffBezanson]

Dup of #6970.