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Date: Fri, 18 Aug 2023 17:27:32 +0200
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To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Access property of object stored in a constant
From: tovilo.ilija@gmail.com (Ilija Tovilo)

Hi everyone

Since https://wiki.php.net/rfc/new_in_initializers we can store
objects in global constants. However, we may not actually read or
write to the properties of those objects without first fetching the
constant into a local variable.

const a = new stdClass;
a->b = 42; // Fatal error: Cannot use temporary expression in write context
$a = a;
$a->b = 42; // Works fine

This issue was reported twice, so it seems like this code is generally
expected to work.
https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/10497
https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/11781

I have created a patch here to add support for this syntax:
https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/11788

Since this is a language change I would like to ask for feedback
before merging. As always, if there are concerns I will create a small
RFC instead. I will also only merge this for 8.4, as feature freeze
for 8.3 has long passed.

Ilija