Hello everyone!
This is my first mail to the internals, my apologies if I made a mistake
somewhere.
I would like to propose a new type of php "file" called "phph", short for
"php-header".
This file could receive an optional open-tag: `<?phph` or perhaps a
`declare(header=1)`,
not sure what's more feasible, or if there are better solutions. This open
tag could be
optional for forward compatibility towards omitting the tag.
Php-header files would be allowed to only contain declaring code. This
means that any code
that would run "while loading", would not be allowed and cause a syntax
error in the same
fashion as trying to add a function call in the middle of a class
declaration.
```php
<?php
// forward compatible? change default in a major version?
// any other ideas?
declare(header=1);
// syntax errors:
echo 'foo';
$a = 'b';
// valid
class Foo {}
interface Bar {}
function baz() {}
// etc
```
By restricting it to declaration only, it would make it possible to add
extra features to
classes, such as annotations as there are a lot less edge cases to think
about:
```php
<?php
@trigger_error('Foo is deprecated as of 2.0, use Bar instead',
E_USER_DEPRECATED);
class Foo {}
```
New scenario could be:
```php
<?php
declare(header=1);
use Php\Debugging\Annotations\Deprecated;
@Deprecated('Foo is deprecated as of 2.0, use Bar instead');
class Foo {}
```
This is a pretty rough sketch, and I'm not exactly sure if this is doable.
I'm really eager
to have native support for annotations and perhaps this idea could inspire
someone with a
solution to make this feasible.
Regards,
Lynn van der Berg
