On Thu, 2003-03-27 at 17:58, Andi Gutmans wrote: > At 05:16 PM 3/27/2003 +0100, Timm Friebe wrote: > >I've implemented an additional feature for type hints that will throw an > >exception instead of bailing out in case an incorrect type is passed. > I don't see any major advantage in doing this.
How about being able to handle errors in a clean and elegant way? Exceptions make this very convenient.
We have an error handler.
Of course, it should not be done in a way to break backward compatibility if at all possible.
I consider having half of PHP throw errors and the other half as throwing exceptions to break BC.
> I think we should keep PHP error handling the same as in PHP 4 and > leave exceptions in user-land.
This is a very bad idea. One of the points of exceptions is being able to have a standardized way of handling errors. I also like the way Java does it: if you don't catch the exceptions your code could throw, your code won't even compile. Now, I am pretty certain that you would not be happy if I said this would be neat to have in PHP. :-) Still, I think it would be great to have it as a configuration directive, because it really is a Good Thing to force programmers to handle errors properly...
If you are looking for a strictly typed language I'd suggest Java :)
We (as in almost everyone) agree that configuration directives should not be added because we want all scripts to run on all PHP enabled servers.
> Otherwise we'll end up having an unmanageable hybrid because there's no way
> we're going to change the error-handling of the existing internal
> functions. The majority of our user base is still functional, please don't
> forget this. I feel that people here tend to forget that.
It is true that many people still write imperative (function-based) code. But that is no argument for not making PHP a really, really good Java-killer. And, standardized exceptions is really one of the things I find absoutely best in Java. Yes, it is awkward in the beginning to always have to try { } catch (or add Throws to your methods), but the benefits are tremendeous.
We are not in the business of killing Java. We are in the business of being the best web programming language. Although Java has some web "scripting" standards such as JSP and Servlets the languages are not in competition. One is a strictly typed compiled language and the other (PHP) a dynamically typed scripting language. The reason for PHP's wide adoption is its ease of use, especially vs. strongly typed languages such as Java. I want to keep this advantage.
Yes, the more I think about it I realize that this is big changes we are talking about. Basically, if we were to make all PHP internal functions throw exceptions on errors, we might as well make them all be static methods in a global PHP object... and that would break all backward compatibility. But maybe there would be a way to do it without breaking all BC?
I hope this email will not start a long flamewar about why OOP is bad/good. Some people will obviously hate it and others love it. But I really, really do believe that if we want PHP to be the best programming environment available, we need to take these issues into serious consideration. Many of the OOP problems of PHP4 have already been fixed in PHP5. Yet, there is still some room for improvement.
You might call it improvement and some might call it bloat. Yes, the important problems with the OOP models have been fixed. I don't think we should "improve" PHP until it becomes Java. If that's what you want then java is a URL away. People here tend to look at Java as the ideal, so if that's the case, maybe PHP isn't for them.
Maybe just have a big configuration switch called "php_oop" that is set to "true" if the user prefers a OOP-based PHP, and "false" otherwise. Possibly, and perhaps a better alternative, adding a new mime type called "application/x-httpd-ohp" with file endings of .ohp, for (puristic) object-oriented code. That might not actually be a bad idea, because it could keep the best of both worlds.
See above why I'm am strongly against this.
Just my $0.02. ;-)
That was more like $10.00 :)
Andi
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