Some real history for the young ones ;)
If you go all the way back to when is_a() was introduced, it appears
that it was done to simplify the code in PEAR::isError, which basically
did stuff like
if is_object() and is subclass() or get_classname() == ...
So the previous behavior was very likely the 'designed' behavior. Not an
accidental side effect, or bug.
It's use case is reasonably common when doing tests on mixed returns
(method returns PEAR:error, object or normal value.)
So we had a situation where a reasonable number of people (eg. anyone
who had used PEAR), had seen and expected the previous behavior.
Where as now, we have not had a single direct bug report saying this
behavior is bad (AFAIK), yet we are going to change it to fix an unusual
use case on is_subclass_of as they use the same backend code.
If this had been reported as a bug, or anybody on this list had actually
been using it and had a gotcha moment, fine. but I've not heard anybody
say that, just they think perhaps it should work a different way.
Please do not fix something that is not broken, and breaks real working
code, just for the hell of it, even in 5.4.
Regards
Alan
On Thursday, August 25, 2011 05:33 AM, Stas Malyshev wrote:
Hi!
Thanks for providing the timeline.
On 8/24/11 2:15 PM, Ferenc Kovacs wrote:
5, Helgi fixed Pear in the meanwhile
http://svn.php.net/viewvc/pear/pear-core/tags/PEAR-1.9.5/PEAR.php?r1=313081&r2=313083&pathrev=313340
This fix doesn't look good - it doesn't do what is was meant to do.
7, Helgi reverts the Pear fix
http://svn.php.net/viewvc/pear/pear-core/tags/PEAR-1.9.5/PEAR.php?r1=313340&r2=313339&pathrev=313340
And this should be using instanceof instead.
8, nobody notices the meaning of this change:
http://svn.php.net/viewvc/php/php-src/branches/PHP_5_4/Zend/zend_builtin_functions.c?r1=312904&r2=312903&pathrev=312904#l848
which AFAIK means that the zend_lookup_class (and hence autoloading)
will always be called if the first argument is a string for is_a.
previously it would only happen for is_subclass_of()
Well, it is obvious to me that is_a() and is_subclass_of() should work
the same and both autoload the first argument if it's a string.
However, the docs have is_subclass_of() documented as accepting string
while is_a() is not and it worked as always returning false given
non-object. I think we could easily keep this behavior for 5.3 even
though I think relying on this is wrong (and you SHOULD fix it
anywhere your code relies on it, including PEAR).
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