What does qualify mean?

Question

When reading articles, manuals, etc... about programming, i always come across the word qualified. like in java the fully qualified class name would be com.example.Class. Reading this article, defines the scope resolution operator :: in C++ as being used to Qualify hidden names so you can still use them. Is there a definition for this ? Beccause it seems to be used in a different context each time.

Answer 1

In computer programming, a fully qualified name is an unambiguous name that specifies which object, function, or variable a call refers to without regard to the context of the call. In a hierarchical structure, a name is fully qualified when it "is complete in the sense that it includes (a) all names in the hierarchic sequence above the given element and (b) the name of the given element itself." Thus fully qualified names explicitly refer to namespaces that would otherwise be implicit because of the scope of the call. While always done to eliminate ambiguity, this can mean different things dependent on context.

Source Wikipedia

In short what it means is that,

You can have a class named Math in your project, but Math is already present in Java too.

So for unambiguously identifying which class you are actually referring to you need to qualify the name with package too:

java.lang.Math //refers to java class Math
org.myproject.Math //refers to your project Math class