Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:111444
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <alpine.DEB.2.23.453.2008100935570.7489@singlemalt.home.derickrethans.nl>
 <5c73b8d0-f477-83a0-4bd4-2fb8d11ad416@seld.be>
 <a5cd901d-86cc-b682-b148-0cb176b764a2@fischer.name>
 <ce6431f2-7bd0-ba7e-cdc0-ed8b5aa25f32@gmx.net>
 <alpine.DEB.2.23.453.2008101636210.7489@singlemalt.home.derickrethans.nl>
Message-ID: <ac8116e7-69cc-94b2-20c6-8a28d0ad613e@gmx.net>
Date: Mon, 10 Aug 2020 18:27:55 +0200
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/68.11.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <alpine.DEB.2.23.453.2008101636210.7489@singlemalt.home.derickrethans.nl>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Content-Language: en-US
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Shorter Attribute Syntax Change
From: a.leathley@gmx.net (Andreas Leathley)

On 10.08.20 17:40, Derick Rethans wrote:
> It missing an ending delimiter was my first reason for wanting to get
> something better than @@. I don't particularly care much if it ends up
> being @[], #[], <<>>, or other things such as @:( ).
>
> If you have something to open, and close, there there is a distinct area
> that forms the whole definition of a thing. That's why functions, and
> classes have { and }, if and other control structures have ( .. ), etc.
>
> Being able to define a whole "thing" easily with an open and closing set
> of symbols, allows for better mental parsing. It also means that syntax
> highlighting tools can map the opening part with the closing part. (VIM
> for example, uses the % character to jump between opening and closing
> symbol).

For me the difference would be that with attributes, you are not opening
and closing many possible statements, it can only be one (or more, with
grouping) class name(s), which then can have arguments, but those are
enclosed with (). In comparison, classes can have many possible
definitions inside of them (class variables, methods, constants, etc.),
so enclosing them clearly makes sense, as you need to know where it
ends. The same goes for if, for, while, etc.

So if you just have one class name as an attribute, enclosing it seems a
bit overkill, as there is already a definition of a class name and how
it starts and ends, which is why for me the mental parsing does not seem
easier - but what is easily parseable probably depends on many factors
and might be different for different people.

I would have found a syntax where the delimiters are optional preferable
- similar to "if", where you can leave off the {} for exactly one
instruction, but you have to add them if there is more than one line of
instructions. Or the group use syntax.