All,
One problem that became apparent after the introduction of __autoload(), is that different pieces of code, sometimes coming from different sources, may want to declare this function in a different way. Today, __autoload() is treated like any other function, so it's impossible to re-declare it.
Marcus tried to solve it by introducing an __autoload() wrapper in SPL. Personally I think it's probably not the right way to go, but that's beside the point right now.
What I'd like to suggest is a change in the behavior of __autoload(), so that multiple __autoload()'s could be defined. Essentially, declaring __autoload() would in fact add the function to the list of functions that are called in case a missing class is referenced. However, it will not actually place a function named __autoload() in the PHP function table. That way, it would be possible to declare multiple __autoloads(), and have all of them called when a missing class is spotted.
The two issues with this solution are:
1. It will be impossible to use the standard means to determine whether __autoload() is declared or not. I don't think that's a very important issue but it's there nonetheless.
2. We need to determine what makes sense as far as calling order if we have more than one __autoload(). My guess would be calling them in the order they were registered, and checking whether the class was defined after each one (if it was - stop).
That solution maintains downwards compatibility (almost, other than issue #1).
Thoughts?
Zeev
-- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
