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Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 21:48:11 +0200 (IST)
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP 5.1
From: stas@zend.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

TS>>across, given what what operator overloading is about). As I've pointed out
TS>>in other postings in this thread, operator overloading is about much more
TS>>than "just" "syntactic sugar". In C++, for example, it enables important

I think you did not succeed in proving this point. You keep bringing 
examples of how useful it is in C++ - which can be interesting to debate, 
but is entirely irrelevant to PHP, since PHP is different from C++ on many 
levels and tasks that are solved with operators in C++ often even not 
exist in PHP (like "smart pointers", etc.). I still fail to see how it can 
be really useful - in terms of making something that was very hard to do
before easy to do now - beyond they syntax sugar value.

TS>>things such as function objects (being able to pass an object to a function,
TS>>for example, and have it behave as a function, enabling functional
TS>>programming, as well). This is not possible (possibly without jumping
TS>>through major hoops) in PHP.

Surely it is. Via __call, for example, which is no worse than operator(). 
Yes, you could not write it the same syntax as C++ - so what?

TS>>However, I see from this and other threads, that there's not much chance of
TS>>evolution of PHP to support more "advanced" features (which are common in

There's a lot of chance for PHP to evolve, but if you mean by it that any
feature that you might like would be in without scrutiny - yes, there's
little chance for that.

TS>>other scripting languages, as mentioned). It seems basic OO support is about
TS>>the only thing the PHP community can handle when it comes to expressiveness
TS>>in the language. Oh, well.

It means you probably won't see in PHP every feature that your favorite
other language has. So what? Your favorite other language probably doesn't
have all the features of PHP. The new features for PHP should be checked
if they are good for PHP and can be implemented consistently and
efficiently in PHP. 

-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Products Engineer   
stas@zend.com  http://www.zend.com/ +972-3-6139665 ext.115