On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 8:07 AM Theodore Brown <theodor...@outlook.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 7:11 AM Benjamin Eberlei <kont...@beberlei.de> wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 17, 2020 at 3:06 AM Theodore Brown <theodor...@outlook.com>
> > wrote:
> > > ## Potential Future Benefits of Enclosed Delimiter Syntax?
> > >
> > > The RFC shows an example of a potential "simpler" attribute using a
> > > string instead of a class name. I honestly have no idea what this is
> > > supposed to do or what benefit it would have over normal attributes.
> > >
> > > The concept of attributes being a class name with optional arguments
> > > has been proven over many years by its use in docblock annotations,
> > > and if there was some deficiency in what this syntax allows it seems
> > > like we would have discovered it by now.
> >
> > I agree on just the string, but a closure would make 100% sense for
> > a decorating feature. Javascript and Python "Attributes" work as
> > decorators, i.e. they get called around the decorated function.
> >
> > It is not a completely unrealistic feature to think off:
> >
> > @[fn($x) => syslog(LOG_INFO, "Called function foo with x: " . $x)]
> > function foo($message) {}
>
> As I understand it JavaScript decorators do not use anonymous
> functions for decorators like this, though. Instead you would make a
> named function and apply it with `@myFunc()` before the decorated
> function or class.
>
> Presumably we could accomplish the same thing in PHP with e.g. an
> `__invoke` method in the attribute class, without complicating the
> attribute syntax itself.
One other thought on this. I agree that decorators are not a
completely unrealistic future feature. However, it must be noted that
both JavaScript and Python use the `@Attr` syntax for decorators, and
the lack of an end delimiter in no way precludes this usage.
The whole point of a decorator is to offer syntax sugar for a common
reusable pattern (pass a function/class to another function which can
add additional information or behavior to it). It's not clear how an
anonymous closure would be useful for this, since it would not allow
reusability, which defeats the purpose.
So the argument that an end delimiter has "potential future benefits"
still lacks any realistic examples, and is countered by years of
proven usage of the `@Attr` syntax in docblocks and other languages.
Sincerely,
Theodore
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