I really like the proposal and it's definitely improving more common modern
use cases.
However, I understand why the precedence is like that now in PHP to begin
with and so I think this should target PHP 8.
This change would be a bit similar to other weird use cases of variables
which were changed with PHP 7.
Best,
Harry
On Thu, 8 Feb 2018 at 20:45 Mcmuffin Mcguffin <mcmuffinmcguf...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> It's a common idiom in object-oriented languages to create an object and
> then immediately call a method on it, such as (in C# or Java):
>
> new DateTime ().ToString ()
>
> However, PHP grammar does not work this way. You have to put an additional
> round of parentheses around new clause, such as:
>
> (new DateTime ())->format ('Y-m-d')
>
> This is rather clunky for such a common scenario (you usually have to walk
> all the way back to the beginning of the expression to fix it). I have a
> pattern of using static factories in place of constructor just to avoid
> extra parentheses. Besides, the issue is relatively easy to fix. I've done
> and tested a change for grammar in this area. It's a slight adjustment to
> definition of dereferencable:
>
> dereferencable:
> > variable { $$ = $1; }
> > | '(' expr ')' { $$ = $2; }
> > * | new_expr { $$ = $1; }*
> > | dereferencable_scalar { $$ = $1; }
> > ;
> >
>
> There was a problem with shift/reduces though. PHP has a level of
> complexity in new expression which other languages don't. It's variable
> class instantiation, such as:
>
> new $class (arguments)
>
> Expressions in place of $class can be rather complex, though I don't think
> they really need to be. For example, such stuff is allowed:
>
> new $var[0]->prop (arguments)
>
> — which seems redundant and confusing. My fix to the problem was to force
> parentheses around complex expressions such as above:
>
> new ($var[0]->prop) (arguments)
>
> — while keeping simple cases of "new $class (arguments)" without change.
> Yes, this moves parentheses from one place to another (and occasionally
> breaks the old code) but frequency wise I think it's an improvement.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Jaroslav Wegner
>
--
Haralan Dobrev
CTO @ Clippings.com
https://hkdobrev.com
