Hi internals, Inspired by the recent discussion on __toArray(), I'd like to propose the addition of a get_mangled_object_properties() function, implemented in https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/4163.
This function returns the mangled object properties (duh...), which matches the behavior of the (array) cast, with the difference that an overloaded (array) cast will be ignored. To the best of my knowledge the only internal class currently doing this is ArrayObject. There are a couple of motivation for this: 1. It makes it more obvious that code operates on mangled properties. This allows clearly distinguishing (array) casts used for low-level object introspection and (array) casts used for things like converting between stdClass and arrays. 2. It is more robust, because it is not affected by overloading. At least in theory it allows us to introduce the __toArray() method proposed in the other thread (though I don't personally endorse this). 3. Longer term, it would allow us to change (array) to return non-mangled (visibility-respecting) properties -- the current behavior is a WTF factor for anyone who doesn't happen to work on serialization or dumping libraries. Thoughts? Regards, Nikita
