ID: 14538
Updated by: mfischer
Reported By: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Old Status: Closed
Status: Open
Old Bug Type: Unknown/Other Function
Bug Type: Documentation problem
Operating System: Any
PHP Version: 4.1.0
New Comment:
Reclassifying as a documentation problem (and reopened).
Manuel did a good job tracking down when the behaviour of dirname() has changed and it
won't hurt us putting this information into the documentation.
Previous Comments:
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[2001-12-15 20:19:58] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Daniel,
I don't think you are realizing how serious this is!
dirname was added to PHP 3.0a3 which was released more than 4 years ago. Until a year
ago it had a behaviour that Andi thought it was not correct, so he fixed it for PHP
4.0.3 eventually breaking the code of people that did not realize it then because they
don't upgrade PHP on every minor release.
So, the point is that what he thought was just a fix, was rather a behaviour change
but he really didn't realize it until I reported today.
I am not proposing a php.ini option. What I am saying is:
1) Admit that Andi did not make a wise decision then and so avoid any future decisions
like this.
2) Decisions like this break end users code and prevents them from upgrading.
3) Everytime a developer faces a decision like this, always provide a backwards
compatible solution to not cause harm to people code base and not hurt their
applications or even their businesses.
I think PHP developers were wise enough to avoid backwards compatibily problems of
registering global by having a php.ini switch. I don't see why that could be bad for
dirname. I am not even saying that you should always add a php.ini switch, but at
least is a solution that does not leave people out there in the cold.
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[2001-12-15 19:50:54] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Actually, you both (Zeev and Manuel) are demanding the same thing, in case you didn't
recognize. You both want a high backwards compatibility, but whereas Manuel is
proposing a switch in php.ini for every little thing, Zeev rather prefers to have this
compatibility "out of the box" (i.e. every script should run with the same behaviour
on every PHP installation - which isn't 100% possible, what he accepts).
providing seperate switches for every little thing would extremely complexify PHP
programming, as you have to take care of every additional switch in PHP, therefore I
agree with Zeev. The best thing would be to never change a language behaviour, but
sometimes it seems to be unavoidable.
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[2001-12-15 19:06:47] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Zeev,
As always I am trying to be constructive here.
I am trying to bring the attention to the fact that as in the past, many ISPs did not
upgrade from old PHP versions because they have bad experiences of having their
clients code broken in new PHP versions. In this case, an old PHP version is 4.0.0
which is the previous major version.
If you decide to not be sensitive to this point , I am afraid you will be leaving a
lot of people annoyed and loosing business.
As to the eventual accusation of being unprofessional, I mean that I am afraid that it
will be what other people will think about who made these backward incompatible
changes.
Forget that I am the person reporting here. I am not relying on that you ever make a
wise decision regarding this. I'll have to make my code work similarly to what you
suggested because I am well aware of the problem, but I am afraid that most people
isn't.
I was just trying to help you avoid any future problems of credibility and
professionalism before other people that may arise from these backward incompatible
incidents (I am afraid there are more issues than just dirname).
I am just trying to help here, I regret the fact that my report is just being
discarded as if I never made it to help you release PHP with a more professional
attitude. Anyway, I am used to this systematic "ignore Manuel Lemos" atitude of yours.
So, do whatever you think is best for your business and keep not caring about me
spending time to help you. :-(
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[2001-12-15 18:47:57] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Manuel,
This behavior is not going to change, and we're not going to introduce a new
headache-causing INI option to toggle this behavior.
If you really can't fix the code, you can create my_dirname() that wraps around
dirname, and returns "" if the result is "". Then, all you have to do is a
search&replace of dirname -> my_dirname.
You use this 'threat' of being accused in unprofessionalism a bit too often, in my
humble opinion :)
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[2001-12-15 18:41:16] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I was trying to test PHP 4.1.0 in a production site that I have that is made of large
code base and realized that dirname original behaviour was broken severely.
The site exists for more than 2 years and always relied on the behaviour that
dirname("/index.php") would return "" as it has been since PHP 3.
The site has 4.0.0 and was never upgraded since because I have this policy of not
installing minor versions to avoid spending a lot of time maintaining changes that are
caused by bugs that may have been introduced.
I investigated and it seems that in PHP 4.0.3, Andi fixed dirname so that
dirname("/index.php") now returns "/" instead of "" as before.
Although this should have been probably the original behaviour of the function, the
fact is that it wasn't not even in PHP 3 days.
My site heavily relies on this feature to let scripts realize in which directory they
are relatively to the server document root using dirname(GetEnv("SCRIPT_NAME")) . So,
my site is seriously broken because I use this everywhere in the site.
I talked with Andi and he is not willing to restore the original behaviour because the
fix was done more than 1 year ago.
So, I propose that some option be added to php.ini that lets developers restore the
original behaviour so that their sites don't break because of this change.
I also would like to recommend PHP developers to take more care when making these
changes that break the existing PHP code base of PHP users because many ISP are
refusing to upgrade to more recent versions because it breaks their clients PHP code
and they would be loosing business if they would upgrade to a newer version.
Please consider this proposal carefully to avoid being accused of unprofessionalism of
not assuring backwards compatibility of PHP functions behaviour.
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Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=14538&edit=1
