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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Suggestion Method Constant
From: markyr@gmail.com (Mark Randall)

On 12/10/2017 22:32, Sara Golemon wrote:
 > Ideally we'd have first-class references to functions.
 > -Sara

To chime in..

To my mind, references to functions is the holy grail so far as 
beginning to clean up the entire ecosystem around function calls.

IMHO directly referencing MyClass::StaticFunction eventually needs to 
return a "Function" class that is directly invokable.

I see 3 contexts that the parser would need to handle:



1. Standard Calling

MyClass::StaticFunction(1, 2, 3);
my_function(1, 2, 3)
$inst->my_function(1234);

Obviously returning a full function object to useland for every call 
would be considered wasteful, so the parser would need to call these as 
before.



2. Returning a native "Function" class, an __invokeable hybrid of 
Callable and Reflection;

$method = MyClass::StaticFunction;
$method(1, 2, 3);

$method = $inst->my_function; /* bind to $inst */
$method(1, 2, 3);

$method->getName();
$method->getArgumentCount();
$method->getBinding();




3. Returning closures when the argument list includes one or more 
late-bound values, so we can finally put the pipe operator to bed at the 
same time as getting a bunch of other power from it.

$method = MyClass::StaticFunction($1, 'Arg 1', 'Arg 3);
$method('Arg 1');

$method = $inst->my_function('Arg 1', 'Arg 2', $1);
$method('Arg 3');

chain(
   'Random String',
   func_1($1, 'Hello', 'World'),
   func_2($1, 'Peace', 'Out'),
   func_3('ThisOneNeeds', 'Arg3ReplacingInstead', $1),
   func_3($1, $1, 'HowAboutOneWhichUsesTheSameArgumentTwice')
);

function chain($start, ... $fns) {
    foreach ($fns as $fncall) {
      $start = $fncall($start);
    }

    return $start;
}


--
Mark Randall