Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:115984
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: <CAF+90c-Xze=9A66hfDggan-JrebJDNvS1LdU45_Lreg+LXGhuw@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAG9XoMTAcKyaVrGFwXDsJUNnU0-oTPOKGQELyFpfedMMzcWhcg@mail.gmail.com>
 <B9F52FB5-6A26-448D-999C-401286955973@cschneid.com> <CAGBsUreLnE5R_vKn-7qDV+mkbm2_t+kqYoCwkmJOZcrezE-nKw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAGBsUreLnE5R_vKn-7qDV+mkbm2_t+kqYoCwkmJOZcrezE-nKw@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 7 Sep 2021 11:22:04 +0200
Message-ID: <CAF+90c_XAF_BrYbF14bFvFKPkR7n5UdaB2G2v+WsBhwLwsy3EA@mail.gmail.com>
To: Kamil Tekiela <tekiela246@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="00000000000078607605cb644da1"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Alias stdClass to DynamicObject?
From: nikita.ppv@gmail.com (Nikita Popov)

--00000000000078607605cb644da1
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

On Mon, Sep 6, 2021 at 6:50 PM Kamil Tekiela <tekiela246@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Nikita,
>
> I think this might be a good idea, but I would like to propose yet another
> variant.
> Replace stdClass with DynamicObject and keep stdClass as an alias. It can
> be deprecated in 8.3.
> If we only add an alias, I am afraid that it will not catch on quickly
> enough. What I am proposing is that the cast to object will create
> DynamicObject by default.
>
> $arr = [1,2];
> var_dump((object) $arr);
> Output:
> object(DynamicObject)#1 (2) {
>   ["0"]=>
>   int(1)
>   ["1"]=>
>   int(2)
> }
>
> It will break unit tests and it might break some code (e.g. `if ('stdClass'
> === $class)`), but it will help people understand what is the preferred
> name going forward without deprecating it right now.
>

My only apprehension with making stdClass rather than DynamicObject the
alias is the widespread impact this will have on extension testing code.
https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/7475 shows the approximate impact on
php-src. We need to update references to stdClass in var_dump() output in
more than 300 tests. We can do this easily, but it will be an inconvenience
for 3rd party extension tests that need to deal with more than one PHP
version.

Apart from that I agree that making DynamicObject the actual name and
stdClass the alias would be better.

Regards,
Nikita

--00000000000078607605cb644da1--