Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:20202
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Message-ID: <4380C8E4.7010903@php.net>
Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2005 13:05:08 -0600
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20051010)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Matthias Pigulla <mp@webfactory.de>
CC: Derick Rethans <derick@php.net>, internals <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <00A2E2156BEE8446A81C8881AE117F192C1BD0@companyweb>
In-Reply-To: <00A2E2156BEE8446A81C8881AE117F192C1BD0@companyweb>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: AW: [PHP-DEV] Curlies again [was: Upgrade notes for PHP 5.1 -
	final draft]
From: cellog@php.net (Greg Beaver)

Matthias Pigulla wrote:
> As to the possible impact - I did a quick scan of Smarty and
> phpDocumentor (because I used to have CVS HEAD checkouts of them at
> hand) and found that both of them would be affected. Please, do not make
> such a change that late in an RC5 and push it out with PHP5.1. At least
> give the maintainers of popular PHP based projects some time to pick it
> up and test it.

This is a non-issue for phpDocumentor.  All we need is at least 6 months 
to a year of lead time on the final decision in order to adjust the code.

However, it is obvious that a script is needed that iterates over a 
script and changes things that are easy to fix like the $a{blah} one.  I 
have an idea for a callback-based php parser that might be able to solve 
this issue more easily, but it is just vaporware at the moment, as I 
need to learn a bit more of the PHP internals before being sure it is a 
practical idea.

In the mean time, let's all calm down and note that the best thing to do 
is to take this course of action:

1) assume things will be broken in PHP (X+1) - a major version increase 
means big changes by definition.
2) be thankful this is transparent enough that we can have enough lead 
time to make small changes to legacy scripts as needed - this is why the 
E_STRICT is added to PHP 5.1 now.  Would you prefer a sudden break in 
PHP 6 without any warning?
3) ALWAYS test RCs of releases when they come out with our critical 
applications and note any breaks here, to determine whether they are 
bugs or intentional changes in PHP.

Thanks,
Greg