ID: 48278
Updated by: [email protected]
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:
Minimizing keystrokes never has and never will be a priority.
Previous Comments:
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[2009-05-14 22:01:10] zyss at mail dot zp dot ua
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.
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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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The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view
the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at
http://bugs.php.net/48278
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Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=48278&edit=1
