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Date: Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:21:02 -0500
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Autoboxing in php 5.1
From: john@coggeshall.org (John Coggeshall)

To be clear:

Although I think this might be implemented as some sort of object I am
not interested in making objects out of everything. All I want is this:

function foo(Integer $a, Float $b, String $c, Boolean $d) {

}

and be able to introspect against that... how that ultimately gets
implemented (likely PHP would auto-cast that to an int) doesn't matter
to me... but the point here is I think the ability to have more
*optional* meta-data associated with function declarations shouldn't be
brushed off as nonsense when there are real benefits to the ability.

John

On Thu, 2005-02-10 at 15:51, John Coggeshall wrote:
> > You did't answer my question. Why?
> 
> I am def. a fan of this idea. I'd love to see internally a set of
> Java-style objects representing the basic types in PHP. 
> 
> As for why I have two reasons:
> 
> Although PHP is not a strongly-typed language and never will be, with
> the introduction of type-hinting I feel that having a standard set of
> objects representing the fundamental types in PHP will allow developers
> of libraries to enforce the proper restrictions if they desire on the
> types which end up in their functions. This further degree of control
> over the architecture in a PHP class makes an architecture tighter and
> easier to manage with growth.
> 
> More importantly than the concept of type-hinting, the lack of typing
> information is holding PHP back signifcantly in the realm of Web
> Services. Although for PHP applications as a whole typing has proven
> itself largely unnecessary, without it making PHP a viable and "simple"
> language for the creation of web services isn't feasible. How am I to
> create a WSDL document from a class I would like to expose as a web
> service? Do you honestly expect me to hand-write a WSDL document for my
> object and maintain that WSDL alongside code changes manually? WSDL
> documents were designed to be generated automatically by the
> architecture exposing the web service, and without any notion of typing
> in PHP at all there is no viable way to really do this.
> 
> Also let me point out that I am *not* suggesting that PHP become a typed
> language. I am merely am suggesting that the ability for me to enforce
> structure on my objects does indeed have a real benefit without breaking
> backward compatibility or otherwise compromising the spirit of PHP.
> 
> John