ZF Coding Standards are based on PEAR's CS. That standard was developed
first by Horde, then expanded by PEAR, during the PHP 4 lifecycle. PHP 4
had no concept of visibility in its object model; to provide some
pseudo-visibility, PEAR CS mandated that members considered non-public
should be prefixed with an underscore.
With the advent of PHP 5, PHP's object model received visibility
operators in the form of private, protected, and public. Applying PEAR
CS to PHP 5 code meant that if you marked a member as private or
protected, you would also prefix with the underscore. Many have felt
this is redundant, and also that it makes refactoring more difficult
(changes in visibility often mean renaming the members). Proponents of
the standard, however, argue that the leading underscore leads to easier
maintenance of the code -- you know immediately what the visibility of
the member you're dealing with is just by looking at it.
PEAR2 has decided to eschew the underscore prefix:
http://wiki.pear.php.net/index.php/MeetingMinutes20080824#Underscore_prefix_on_private_.28protected.3F.29
Basically, this rule is no longer required (as it was in PEAR1), though
developers may choose to use them.
What is YOUR opinion? Should the underscore be dropped in ZF2?
Please vote!
http://is.gd/eeA6f
Please do _not_ reply to this thread -- the arguments for and against
are well known at this time -- we're simply trying to decide on whether
or not to amend the coding standards for ZF2.
Thanks!
--
Matthew Weier O'Phinney
Project Lead | [email protected]
Zend Framework | http://framework.zend.com/
PGP key: http://framework.zend.com/zf-matthew-pgp-key.asc
