Christian Schneider wrote: > Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote: >> one could also do >> 1) ns >> 2) global >> 3) autoload > > I'm in favour of this (if it avoids performance problems) as I don't see > a problem with giving global priority over autoload.
Hi, This is the current name resolution. The problem is that: <?php namespace foo; $a = new Exception(); ?> will instantiate foo::Exception only if the class already exists, but will instantiate Exception otherwise. This defeats autoload's purpose for existing. We've been over this before. It's dangerous. There is one essential difference between classes and functions/constants: autoload. The only time the question of load order and fallback becomes and issue is when code is not explicitly loaded. In other words, a developer who is relying upon an external function will do this at some point before calling the function: <?php include 'path/to/code/containing/function/source.php'; ?> In other words, PHP expects you to actually load the source of functions or constants you're going to be using in advance of using it. This, I believe, is a reasonable expectation. Classes, however, do *not* share this same expectation, because autoload's explicit purpose is to allow using classes *before* their source has been loaded. In other words, it is perfectly all right to have a different name resolution for classes than we have for functions and constants because of this different expectation. It is dangerous to fallback for classes prior to autoload, but it is not at all dangerous for functions/constants because the expectation is different. For this reason, the only resolution that we should be considering is: classes: 1) try ns::class 2) autoload ns::class 3) fail functions/constants: 1) try ns::function/ns::const 2) try internal function/const 3) fail. Note that I say "try internal" because the only purpose behind allowing this is to make it easier to use PHP's built-in functionality. Any userspace stuff should be specifically \prefixed or imported via use. And (yes) we need import for functions. Greg P.S. my mail server has been down for almost a week, apologies to anyone who is wondering why I haven't replied to your message, I probably didn't get it. -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
