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Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2025 17:09:40 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: short and inner classes
To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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From: tovilo.ilija@gmail.com (Ilija Tovilo)

Hi Bob

On Thu, Mar 13, 2025 at 11:36=E2=80=AFPM Bob Weinand <bobwei9@hotmail.com> =
wrote:
>
> On 6.3.2025 23:20:37, Ilija Tovilo wrote:
>
> > I would also like to echo what has been said about the :: operator,
> > which feels out of place. I understand that \ comes with additional
> > autoloading challenges, namely requiring a fallback autoloading
> > strategy that currently does not conform to PSR-4.
>
> Could you please elaborate on why the :: operator feels out of place?
>
> \ is a namespace separator.
>
> :: is a class scoping separator.
>
>
> You, yourself did decide to use nested :: for property hook scoping, like=
 parent::$x::set() - a property scoped within a class, having methods.
> The same applies here - it's a class scoped within a class, having method=
s.
>
> Breaking from these patterns seems very surprising to me.

:: is an operation performed on the class. E.g. fetch a static
property, fetch a constant, call a static method, while \ is part of
the class name. The way I see it, the outer class can simply add an
additional namespace component to the inner class.

class Foo {
    class Bar {} // Called Foo\Bar

    public Bar $bar;
}

This is dead simple, it doesn't change any assumptions about class
names by embedding new symbols, it doesn't need a new operator, you
can refer to the class with its short name from inside the outer class
without `self:>`, which is shorter and more straight forward, `use
Foo\Bar;` will just work in other classes, etc.

One thing this approach breaks is that it doesn't allow for
polymorphic inner class resolution, i.e. static:>Bar. But given this
was removed anyway, that point no longer applies. This can also easily
be replicated by a simple method:

class Foo {
    class Bar {}

    public function createBar(): Bar {
        return new Bar();
    }
}

Except this is actually type-safe, because the return value of
createBar() must stay compatible with Foo\Bar.

Ilija