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Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 13:05:22 +0300
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Subject: __autoload() enhancement
From: zeev@zend.com (Zeev Suraski)

All,

One problem that became apparent after the introduction of __autoload(), is 
that different pieces of code, sometimes coming from different sources, may 
want to declare this function in a different way.  Today, __autoload() is 
treated like any other function, so it's impossible to re-declare it.

Marcus tried to solve it by introducing an __autoload() wrapper in 
SPL.  Personally I think it's probably not the right way to go, but that's 
beside the point right now.

What I'd like to suggest is a change in the behavior of __autoload(), so 
that multiple __autoload()'s could be defined.  Essentially, declaring 
__autoload() would in fact add the function to the list of functions that 
are called in case a missing class is referenced.  However, it will not 
actually place a function named __autoload() in the PHP function 
table.  That way, it would be possible to declare multiple __autoloads(), 
and have all of them called when a missing class is spotted.

The two issues with this solution are:

1.  It will be impossible to use the standard means to determine whether 
__autoload() is declared or not.  I don't think that's a very important 
issue but it's there nonetheless.
2.  We need to determine what makes sense as far as calling order if we 
have more than one __autoload().  My guess would be calling them in the 
order they were registered, and checking whether the class was defined 
after each one (if it was - stop).

That solution maintains downwards compatibility (almost, other than issue #1).

Thoughts?

Zeev