On 4 April 2012 10:02, Alan Knowles <a...@akbkhome.com> wrote: > PHP enforces rules like $this can not be used in a method marked 'static'. > So why not flag methods (and internal functions) with a flag that indicates > they can throw things. Since PHP is not a compiled language we can not pick > up 'all' of the potential scenarios, but even if E_NOTICE's pick up 80% it > would make code considerably more maintainable.
I don't like this. It's basically the equivalent of Java's "throws Exception" antipattern[0] with none of the claimed benefits of checked, fine grained exception specification (which I'm dubious about in general, particularly having also used C++'s static exception specifiers, which are even worse than Java's dynamic ones). There are issues with both backward and forward compatibility here: assuming this was in PHP 5.5, you could effectively no longer write code that was E_STRICT/E_NOTICE clean in both PHP 5.4 and 5.5 — you can't add catchable to functions in PHP 5.4 because it's not a keyword, but you can't throw an exception in PHP 5.5 without it unless you're prepared to incur a notice. And the associated performance loss, which may turn out to be significant if it's happening on most function calls in a script's lifetime. Also, I already know how to use exceptions, and write clean code. I don't really want to have to add catchable to all of the functions I've written that may throw — or may call library functions that may throw — when I upgrade to PHP 5.5. It's a lot of work, and given that a lot of libraries now use exceptions, a lot of developers would end up almost mechanically adding catchable to pretty much every function, which loses any minimal code quality advantage that might exist. Exception specifications in general don't feel very PHPish to me, but that would be a different discussion. Catchable, as a limited form of exception specification, feels even less useful than that. > Anyway... flame away ;) Sorry, I guess I kind of did. It's nothing personal. :) Adam [0] http://today.java.net/article/2006/04/04/exception-handling-antipatterns#throwingException -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
