# Both FileIO and HDF5 export "filename"

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/both-fileio-and-hdf5-export-filename/3733>\
**Category:** General Usage\
**Tags:** question\
**Created:** [May 16, 2017, 6:15am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/both-fileio-and-hdf5-export-filename/3733 "2017-05-16T06:15:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![innerlee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b19c9b/32.png) [@innerlee](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/innerlee)\
**Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 6:15am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/both-fileio-and-hdf5-export-filename/3733/1 "2017-05-16T06:15:00Z")

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```julia
julia> using FileIO

julia> using HDF5

julia> WARNING: both HDF5 and FileIO export "filename"; uses of it in module Main must be qual
ified
julia> filename
ERROR: UndefVarError: filename not defined

```

The `filename` in two libraries have different signatures. They should not have any clash I suppose? Why couldn’t they coexist?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Daneel](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/daneel/32/175_2.png) [@Daneel](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Daneel)\
**Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 6:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/both-fileio-and-hdf5-export-filename/3733/2 "2017-05-16T06:41:48Z")

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I’m not sure it can be avoided. There are plenty of packages that will have similar but distinct capabilities and the terms are too common to avoid. If I’m using two different plotting packages because they are better at different things then I _expect_ each to have a `plot` function. In that case I would then have to distinguish between the two.

`PyPlot.plot()` vs `Gadfly.plot()`

Have you tried `FileIO.filename` or `HDF5.filename`?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![innerlee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b19c9b/32.png) [@innerlee](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/innerlee)\
**Post date:** [May 16, 2017, 7:05am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/both-fileio-and-hdf5-export-filename/3733/3 "2017-05-16T07:05:54Z")

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Yes I know `FileIO.filename` will work. I expect the system accept possible ambiguities, and show error only when there are ambiguous calls in runtime.