What is the purpose of hiding EmailAuthProvider for firebase_auth?

Question

What is the purpose of the "hide" I see in almost all the example imports like the one below?

import 'package:firebase_auth/firebase_auth.dart'        
    hide EmailAuthProvider, PhoneAuthProvider;           // new

Even after multiple google searches and searches here, I can't find the answer. It is probably buried in some Dart tutorial somewhere, but I am really getting tired of searching through documentation that ends abruptly with a "404" or points to documentation that clearly labels itself as archived.

Answer 1

The keyword hide is used to only partially import names from the referenced library. In your case, you import all names except for the ones EmailAuthProvider and PhoneAuthProvider .

This can be useful when you import two libraries that contain the same name. Then you can hide one to make it clear which one to use.

For context, take a look at the dart language tour .