Hi Matthew,
Set your error_reporting level to E_ALL. The parser will then report the use
of undeclared variables.
--zak
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matthew Aznoe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "php" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2001 2:22 PM
Subject: [PHP] Variable name declarations?
>
>
> I have to agree that strong typing is not a good fit with PHP. It really
> limits the flexibility of the language that is, at least to me, one it its
> strongest appeals. Often, strong typing can be overly restrictive, and
free
> typing, when combined with good comments and documentation which should go
> alongside any piece of code, allows much easier development in my
> experience.
>
> However, I do have one complaint about PHP that seems to have a tendency
to
> bite me far too often, and that is the lack of variable declaration.
While
> I do not think the type of the variable should be required, requiring the
> user to specify which variable names are going to be used I think would be
> useful. The reason why I believe this is important is in debugging. I
have
> been caught many times misspelling a variable name slightly (ie -> ei),
and
> since PHP does no variable name checking, sometimes it takes a while to
> discover the error. If each variable name had to be declared prior to
use,
> it would eliminate this problem by warning the user each time an
undeclared
> name was used.
>
> The syntax could be very simple using constructs that already exist in the
> langauge. The name would be defined by using the var command somewhere in
> code prior to the variable being used (as in classes... but here again,
the
> class elements are not limited to those defined). The declaration would
> reserve only the name of the variable, so the actual type would continue
to
> be free form. Arrays could continue to be created as they are now since
> only the name of the variable would be checked (you could still have
> potential problems in associative arrays). Global PHP variables (ie
> $GLOBALS) would not need to be declared (they would be declared
> automatically).
>
> example:
>
> function sum_array( $input_array )
> {
> var $index;
> var $sum = 0;
>
> for( $index = 0; $index < count( $input_array ); $index++ )
> $sum += $input_array[ $index ];
>
> return $sum;
> }
>
> Potentially, the $index variable could also be declared within the for
loop
> by adding a var before the first index as well. To keep things simple and
> in line with the current variable scope rules, the scope of the name would
> be global for the function in which it was defined.
>
> I do not know all of the logistics behind the parsing and compilation
> processes in the PHP engine, but I believe this could be done without too
> much overhead. It could be an optional feature (controlled from the
php.ini
> file) that could be turned off when released to production to save on
> performance. If this value was defaulted to "off" in the release, it
would
> also allow people to upgrade existing code to the new version without
> having to worry about instantly changing their code to the new paradigm.
>
> I do not believe that this would sacrifice very much freedom in the
> language, and it would certainly make debugging and maintainence easier on
> the developer. Also, by having all of the variables declared at the top
of
> the functions, it could help commenting by describing the variable name as
> it is being declared, and it would encourage a better coding style.
>
> Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?
>
>
> Matthew Aznoe
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
>
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