At 17:43 17-08-01, Hellekin O. Wolf wrote:
>*** I understood that 4.0.7 / 4.1.0 would be a question of what we want next.
4.1.0 will. We're not changing any defaults in 4.0.7...
>If E_ALL brings better code, why not encourage that ?
>Democracy is good as long as it's evolving. If we encourage a default lax
>behavior, lax coders we'll have. If we encourage tighter programming, even
>the novice can cope with it and learn faster, and make less mistakes, etc.
>Is that too optimistic ? Or am I forgetting the existing code base ?
I think it's a bit too optimistic, not to mention the existing code base :)
>I think that as $HTTP_*_VARS disappear, lots of people will have to change
>that (Search/Replace + delete the corresponding "global" calls) anyway in
>order to use the new $_* arrays in future versions.
There's a fundamental difference - setting E_NOTICE on means you have to
audit *all* of your code, and in some cases, think about every possible
execution path, just to see if you have a problem. While the HTTP_*_VARS
is an easy S&R issue, and even setting register_globals off affects only
the form-interface part of the application and is usually also an issue of
S&R (slower, but still S&R), there's no way to fix all notices in a quick
way. Even if you find the problems (which is very time consuming), fixing
them can't be done using S&R, and it sometimes even requires changes to the
logic.
It's not that "While we're at it" type of action, it has considerable
additional implications.
>It's probably better to bother people once for good instead of once every
>version. The purpose of 4.0.* vs .4.1.* should be clear for all : it's a
>new step and you have to make it.
First off, nobody *has* to do anything. They can always use an old
version, or if we screw up too badly, switch to something else (I think the
register_globals thing alone will take at least a year to catch, especially
considering we're not eliminating the ability to turn it on).
We're walking on a fine line here, between keeping PHP's ease of use and
cleanliness. PHP is *definitely* not the cleanest language around, and
it's not meant to be, either. That's why not every action that would
result in a 'cleaner' language is automatically applied.
Zeev
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