On Friday, December 31, 2010 7:56:39 am Nicolas Grekas wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> this RFC started by me having a problem on these subjects (not only me
> I think) :
> - namespaced functions and constants loading, or rather not-autoloading,
> - interfaces loading (this time, autoloading).
<snip>
> So, my first proposal for namespaced functions and constants is :
> 1. Remove namespaced functions and constants at all - promote
> namespaced public static methods and class consts instead.
>
> This would fix static code analysis, and the discussion about how to
> autoload (I may say "how to package") namespaced functions and
> constants would vanish. About backward compatibility, who as written
> code relying on namespaced functions or constants? They are useless!
Dear god no! Functions are already close to being second-class citizens in
PHP at this point. The project I work on (Drupal) is currently debating how
to leverage function namespaces for our next version and there are several
ways that we could do so effectively; mostly they come down to module ==
namespace, and then a "hook" (magic function callback) can be placed within a
namespace. That would actually make for clearer code than our current model.
Class == namespace is wrong. Plain and simple. It is a broken assumption
based on broken understanding and the use of them that way is broken. That
approach is utterly useless if you want any sort of flexibility.
> My second proposal is :
> 2. At runtime, when a namespaced identifier is used (lets say
> \my\sub\ns\class_interface_constant_or_function), take the namespace
> part of the identifier and if any, autoload it as if it were a class,
> do not generate any error if the given class name is not found. (ie,
> trigger something like class_exists('my\sub\ns', true);).
I am not entirely sure I follow. Are you suggesting that:
use Stuff\Things as Bar;
$foo = new Bar\Baz\Foo()
should trigger:
autoload('Stuff\Things\Baz\Foo');
AND
autoload('Stuff\Things\Baz')?
In the current approach I don't know how you'd properly resolve the "namespace
portion" of the extended class/function/whatever name. Honestly, combined
with the previous proposal(s) for function autoloading (which I support in
general) it seems to me that we need to have separate but parallel pathways
for autoloading different things; that could lead to better performance, too.
If we can properly separate them I can see a use for "clustered" autoloading,
certainly, and namespace is a not-unreasonable definition of cluster.
> Cons :
> - none
> - well, one : I don't speak C, so I don"t have any patch...
I sadly have the same problem. :-)
--Larry Garfield
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