ID: 48278
User updated by: zyss at mail dot zp dot ua
Reported By: zyss at mail dot zp dot ua
Status: Bogus
Bug Type: Feature/Change Request
Operating System: Irrelevant
PHP Version: 5.2.9
New Comment:
It is a matter of programmer's personal attentiveness. In your example
there is a mix of using $ and not using it. Most developers will not do
it. Besides in other languages this theoretical problem is even not
discussed. For example, as you know in C/C++ there is a de facto
standard of using CAPITAL LETTERS for constants which is enough to
distinguish them from variables. Many PHP developers follow this
concept.
>From the other side if one wanted to calculate how many key strokes
will it save to allow not to use $ prefix in a PHP project with 100000
lines of code - this number would be huge. No one will argue that PHP is
derived from C. It is evident that C language itself was created to
minimize typing (as one of its primary goals, comparing to academic
Pascal is enough to see this). So why not to follow the original path -
to avoid unneeded typing while leaving a possibility to use $ for
compatibility and in some special cases?
The same arguments can be applied to { } arrays and "in" operator.
Previous Comments:
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[2009-05-14 19:59:52] [email protected]
There are also edge cases like
$a['foo'] = 1;
$foo = 2;
echo $a[foo];
That would behave differently with optional $'s
And I like the obvious separation between constants and variables. It
avoids side-effects if someone somewhere suddenly creates a constant
that then goes and changes behaviour all over the place because of this
constants-over-variables approach.
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[2009-05-14 19:43:25] zyss at mail dot zp dot ua
It will not break stuff if defined constants will have higher priority.
In such case developer can just leave $ prefix.
It would be really great if PHP developers have an option to choose
whether to use the prefix or not. Eventually all new code will be
written without $ and there will be no conflicts.
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[2009-05-14 18:24:04] [email protected]
And it will most definitely break stuff since removing the $ would
clash with any defined constants.
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[2009-05-14 11:07:12] [email protected]
Fork away, it is open source after all.
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[2009-05-14 09:04:20] zyss at mail dot zp dot ua
Description:
------------
$ character is one of the most widely used in PHP code, in most cases
its use is unreasonable. I understand its historical roots, it came from
Unix shell scripts (such as bash) where it was required to make
interpreters "life" easier. But today's most powerful languages do not
require use of variable prefix to distinguish between variable and other
identifiers.
There are some cases where use of $ if reasonable, for example inside
strings and when calling function by name stored in a variable. In all
other cases programmers are dazzled by it.
I do not propose to remove $ prefix, it would be a major improvement to
make it OPTIONAL (this change will not break any existing code but many
people will breathe a sigh of relief).
P.S. If you will continue to prefer PHP-interpreter developers'
convenience over PHP-code developers' we will start our own fork of PHP
to be able to add required functionality to it.
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Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=48278&edit=1
