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To: internals@lists.php.net
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:17:05 -0800
Subject: Named arguments revisited
From: jared@intuitivefuture.com (Jared White)

Hi folks,

I just got on the list -- I've been a big fan of PHP for several  
years and am throughly enjoying PHP 5. Good work folks, and once I  
can get 5.1 set up on my OS X box I'm sure it's be even better.

I've been very interested in hearing about PHP 6 feature discussions,  
and the meeting notes that Derrick posted looked really good. But  
there was one item that stood out for me as being extremely  
disappointing, and that was the curt dismissal of named arguments (or  
parameters I guess you are calling them).

Named arguments are absolutely essential for using PHP as a solid  
templating language, and, in fact, they also greatly enhance code  
readability for complex method calls of in-depth APIs. My experience  
with both Objective-C and Python has showed me the wonders and joys  
of named arguments, and it is something I've desperately wanted in  
PHP for ages. I'm sure I'm not alone in this. I've tried array  
constructs, multiple arguments with string-based names and fancy  
parsing using func_get_args(), and various combinations thereof, and  
nothing is a good substitute for the real deal.

If I had the technical knowhow to jump in and help implement this, I  
would, but I'm a lousy C programmer. :( But I definitely want to lend  
my support to anyone interested in working on this. Please, please  
don't give up on this feature!

Thanks so much,

Jared