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Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 18:06:57 -0700
To: Marcus Boerger <mail@marcus-boerger.de>,internals@lists.php.net
In-Reply-To: <431687753.20041002122053@marcus-boerger.de>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Improvement for array functions
From: andi@zend.com (Andi Gutmans)
References: <431687753.20041002122053@marcus-boerger.de>

Marcus,

 From reading this it doesn't seem as if this patch is array() specific but 
is a general one.
If I understand correctly, it will pass the hash (zval *) as-is and will 
never do a zval_copy_ctor(). This means that this value must for all 
practical purposes be read-only. What does this mean to the extension writer?
Am I correct? We need to be sure that we don't add this new functionality 
without being sure how the extensions should handle it in order not to get 
side effects.
Andi


At 12:20 PM 10/2/2004 +0200, Marcus Boerger wrote:
>Hello internals,
>
>Hello Andi,
>
>   here's another major speed improvement for array functions which
>is probably also valid for other functions, too. The point is that
>we have several functions not forcing parameters by reference because
>they not only accept variables but also parameters by value and we
>cannot pass values by ref directly. The solution is to automatically
>find out whether to pass by ref or not. See the test script for
>the difference - it's amazing in this example!
>
>http://php.net/~helly/php/ext/ze2/ze2-auto-ref-20040930.diff.txt
>http://php.net/~helly/php/ext/ze2/ze2-auto-ref.php
>
>How does it work exactly:
>
>For example the function in_array() is defined with both arg types == 0
>which mean not by ref. As a consequence when you have an array which is
>stored somewhere else as a reference it will be copied. So the obvious
>question is why not declare the function arg type as force by reference?
>Simply because that does not work. The array functions are all designed
>to accept arrays on the fly like in_array(2,array(1,2)). And unfortunatley
>those direct values cannot be send by reference. But the compiler knows
>whether it can send by ref or not and that is what the patch does. It
>adds a new argument infor which tells the compiler to find out whether
>the parameter can be passed by reference or must be passed by value.
>
>Any comments?
>
>--
>Best regards,
>  Marcus
>
>--
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