Zeev,
My only gripe with create_function() is the inherent "dirt" involved
in handing a code-containing string to a function. I've been living
in the app development world for some time now, so my example stash
is clean out, but my notion is that, for folks who have a real, novel
application for an anonymous lambda function, the benefit of having
it "fit in" with the rest of the language would be at least
tangible. Granted, everything is effectively run-time in the PHP
world, but the ability to employ regular syntax for these anonymous
functions could be quite handy. Things like line numbers, code
formatting, highlighting, and annotations would be as relevant as in
"regular" code.
I agree that we shouldn't look at the laundry list of every other
language feature and include them all, but better support for
anonymous functions would surely help some folks. That said, the
ability to generate and run code from a string in one pass is handy,
but maybe it's not just what the doctor ordered in some cases. I've
always seen PHP as an enabling technology, allowing people to solve
their problems in very novel and fitting ways. I'd hate to see that
philosophy suffer when the problem space lends itself to functional
programming.
Thanks,
-Noah
On Aug 23, 2005, at 3:01 PM, Zeev Suraski wrote:
At 09:18 23/08/2005, Michael Walter wrote:
On 8/22/05, Stanislav Malyshev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> MB>>> * Anonymous functions. The real stuff, not just some odd
string
> MB>>> passed to create_function().
> MB>>
> MB>>There were some others already asking for this, maybe we
should at least
> MB>>give it a thought if it is doable at all, anybody?
>
> Just out of curiosity, what's bad in create_function and how
"real" ones
> should be different?
"Real" anonymous functions (as in, closures) should be able to
capture
variables from its lexical environment, e.g.:
create_function() accepts a string, and that string is constructed
with full access to the lexical scope of the creating function, so
I'm not exactly sure how it's different. My ML/LISP memory fails me.
function adder($a) {return function($b) {return $a+$b;}}
function index($i) {return function($a) {return $a[$i];}}
I'm sure you can think of useful examples.
Since when do we consider moving towards LISP a good thing? :)
For those odd ends where you really need that, create_function()
can do the job for you just as well (before anybody complains that
it's cumbersome - GOOD, it's supposed to be, you're not supposed to
be creating functions on the fly unless you absolutely have to).
Zeev
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