Blimey. I agree with Rasmus. That's twice now!
I think PHP 6 should be an interim period with support for both scenarios,
but with the default being bog-standard as-we-know-it IS_STRING and anything
IS_UNICODE needing to be marked.
Perhaps PHP 7 can drop the IS_STRING stuff and have it all IS_UNICODE, by
removing the need to mark unicode text and taking it all that way. I think
doing this in PHP 6 will make for a white elephant situation (and we like
purple-blue, no?)
- Steph
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rasmus Lerdorf" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Chris Stockton" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: "php-dev" <internals@lists.php.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2008 7:28 PM
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] why we must get rid of unicode.semantics switch ASAP
I don't disagree with this, and that is actually why I insisted on having
the unicode-semantics switch from the early days of the Unicode
discussions, so you can blame me, again, if you consider it a bad design
decision.
My take on it was that just about all ISPs would run with Unicode
semantics off and that the Unicode semantics on mode was more geared for
large standalone applications and sites that wanted the luxury of working
natively in their chosen character set without needing to always jump
through hoops.
If we get rid of the switch, then I agree that we can't make the default
string IS_UNICODE. We would be crippling the implementation and taking a
step backwards in terms of leading the way in Unicode adoption. The
longterm goal for just about everyone has got to be a "Unicode everywhere"
approach. It used to be that the Web was primarily a Western single-byte
charset phenomena, but that hasn't been the case for years. All major
applications out there have implemented various hacks to deal with these
issues, some with more success than others.
This is what PHP does. We take common Web development pains and try to
reduce them. Think back to the pains of XML parsing in PHP 3 and even in
PHP 4 compared to today.
Ultimately we need to get to Unicode everywhere, and the Unicode semantics
switch was an acknowledgement that the world isn't quite ready for that
yet. But it sounds like the world isn't ready for the switch either.
Without it, I am afraid we will never get there, and that may just be
something we have to live with.
-Rasmus
Chris Stockton wrote:
I partially agree, I have been watching this discussion and it's funny
how we have such a class of high end developers saying to break old
PHP code. But, the majority of the success of PHP is not due to this
small class of high end developers, it's due to it's availability in a
shared hosting environment, and the ease of use for beginners, and the
oodles of fairly poor quality code that is easy to copy and paste onto
peoples websites.
Look at the adoption of php4, many webhosts haven't even updated to
PHP5 completely due to things like register_globals and small
backwards compatibility breakage. The list of problems is small and
correctable, if you give system engineers at all of these hosting
companies the choice of A. Upgrade to php6 and drive support calls
through the roof, or B. Stay at PHP4/5 for eternity until a more
(insert your complaints / rants here) language comes along to dethrone
PHP.
Problem is, PHP has been built to great success based on it's early
foundation, but now a group of high class developers want it to be
more then PHP was built onto. You will sacrifice it's success if
backwards compatibility is not just, broke, but obliterated. Why
change PHP's philosophy? Keep it easy for the new user, keep it
successful, and make me work a little more when I want to implement my
"high class" development methodologies. I don't mind, I do it already.
I write this as a "high class" developer.
-1
-Chris
On Jan 22, 2008 7:32 PM, Richard Lynch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Mon, January 21, 2008 8:38 am, Antony Dovgal wrote:
6 reasons why we must to get rid of The Switch ASAP
----------------------------------------------------
I was +1...
Until folks started posting that old PHP scripts won't run as-is in
PHP 6?...
That's just daft...
When my webhost upgrades to PHP 6, I need all my old scripts to just
keep on chugging away, as much as possible...
I really think we're stuck with the default "string" being an
old-school binary string, unless you want to lose a LOT of users in a
hurry, or have PHP 5 stick around forever and ever.
--
Some people have a "gift" link here.
Know what I want?
I want you to buy a CD from some indie artist.
http://cdbaby.com/from/lynch
Yeah, I get a buck. So?
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