I was thinking it'd be useful if people could switch between throwing exceptions and displaying errors. If throw were a function and not a language construct one could do $function($error) where $function was a string equal to either 'trigger_error' or 'throw'. But alas that's not possible.
In lieu of that it seems like it'd be useful if maybe a new error type constant could be added - E_USER_THROWABLE - that'd turn trigger_error into a throw. You wouldn't be able to use custom Exception classes in this instance but I think that'd be acceptable. ie. if you want more versatility use throw. If you just want to be able to switch between error's and thrown exceptions use trigger_error(). Also, I think it'd be useful if developers could specificy which line number and file name the error (or exception) displays For example... I was trying to implement support for stream_notification_callback in a custom stream wrapper. In my tests if you pass a non-callable string to the built-in ftp stream via, let's say, fopen(), you get an error saying "failed to call user notifier" on the fopen() line. But with custom stream wrappers the best you can do is to use trigger_error(). But that means that it's going to show not the line of the fopen() but instead the line of the trigger_error(). Which is of limited usefulness I'd say since the trigger_error() isn't where the error actually is. If a developer could control which line numbers and file names were displayed they could iterate through debug_backtrace() to get the actual line number they wanted to display. What are your thoughts?
