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Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 21:13:54 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Use of 'self' in static function in subclass
From: thekid@thekid.de (Timm Friebe)

On Tue, 2004-06-01 at 15:11, Bert Slagter wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I have a class and a subclass, both with a static method:
[...]
> Somehow this behaviour seems logical, on the other hand I don't think 
> it's desired. I think that 'self' should point to the current class, 
> even if the static method resides in a parent class.
> 
> Is this 'self'-behaviour intended?

Yes: self is bound at compiletime. It would need to be changed to
evaluation at runtime und would be far more useful then.

This has been reported a couple of times, in slight variations:
  http://zend.com/lists/engine2/200307/msg00033.html
  http://zend.com/lists/engine2/200307/msg00036.html
  http://zend.com/lists/engine2/200309/msg00024.html

In one of these, Marcus suggested a new keyword "this" which would
behave like a run-time self, e.g:

  class Test {
    public static function getInstance() {
      return new this();
    }
  }
  
  class Foo extends Test {
  }
  
  var_dump(Foo::getInstance());

would output "object(foo)" instead of "object(test)". I wouldn't mind
chaning self in the first place, though.

- Timm