> Le 26 oct. 2023 à 21:23, Larry Garfield <la...@garfieldtech.com> a écrit :
>
> App-wide aliases run into the autoloading problem. If the engine runs across
> the add() function above, and "numeric" isn't defined, what can it do?
> Currently, all it can do is trigger autoloading, which only works for
> class-ish constructs (class, interface, trait, enum). Making type aliases a
> full class-like construct seems... weird, and over-engineered. But if not,
> how do we autoload them? And if they do autoload somehow, does that mean we
> end up with a bunch of files with a single `type` line in them? That seems
> not-good. You also then have to ask how they interact with namespaces.
>
> So far no one seems to like my idea of "composer has a files block, PHP has a
> preloader, they're small, so who the hell cares about autoloading, just
> greedily load them and move on with life", even though I think that's the
> best answer. :-)
Hi,
“Autoloading” does not mean (and has never meant) “one file per class-like
construct”; even if it is the most customary strategy (and the one consecrated
by PSR), it is by no means the only one.
Proof of concept: With the following autoloader, at the first time the compiler
needs the definition of some class-like symbol under the FooBits\Acme\Type
namespace, all symbols under that namespace are loaded together:
```php
spl_autoload_register(function ($class) {
if (str_starts_with($class, 'FooBits\\Acme\\Type\\')) {
// we have conventionally put all types defined by our library under
this namespace,
// and there are all defined together in the following file:
require 'vendor/foobits/acme/src/types.php';
}
elseif (str_starts_with($class, 'FooBits\\Acme\\')) {
// for other symbols we use the boring psr-4 convention
require 'vendor/foobits/acme/src/' . str_replace('\\', '/',
substr($class, 13)) . '.php';
}
});
```
I think that treating the type aliases as class-like *names* for the purpose of
naming and autoloading (without giving my opinion whether they are class-like
*constructs* for some definition of “are”) is a reasonable approach, and
autoloading/preloading/whatever-loading-strategy ought to be treated as an
orthogonal (non-)issue.
—Claude
