Hi, I'm not fully convinced we really need it, I had some moments in the past where I wished they existed, but always found good solutions.
That said: On Sun, 2010-04-04 at 18:28 -0400, Gregory wrote: > The question I have is if we are not copying the array semantics > anymore, whether we should have abc('a' => 3) or abc(a => 3). I > personally would prefer 'a' => 3 because that allows for variable > parameter names. Allowing variable parameter names means allowing any expression (else it gets messy with inconsistent rules) which means that we allow a very flexible syntax which might lead to code that's hard to understand. If you don't know which parameters you want to provide maybe an array is the better option. With such a syntax I expect more abuse than useful use of the feature. For do_something(parameter => 23); we have the benefit, that IDEs could easily validate that which prevents typos and provide aid. But then I'm not sure this fits to the language either as we always expect quoted names. And from the some distance this looks like a constant used used as parameter name, as in <?php const foo = 42; $a = array(foo => 'bar'); do_something(foo => 'bar'); ?> Another possible limitation there is that our parser won't allow keywords there. An example where this might be annoying might be something along these lines: <?php function getInstance($param1 = 1, $param2 = 2, $class = 'default_class' { $r = new ReflectionClass($class); return $r->createInstance($param1, $param2); } getInstance(class => 'my_class'); ?> Just some random thoughts, maybe somebody has a better syntax, maybe that's just me, johannes -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php