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Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 15:11:15 +0100
Lines: 149
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Syntax in PHP 6
From: r.korving@xit.nl ("Ron Korving")

forgive my copy/paste error:

"imagecreatefromstring needs no change, except that it will officially be 
strPos()"

should say:

"imagecreatefromstring needs no change, except that it will officially be 
imageCreateFromString()"

- Ron


""Ron Korving"" <r.korving@xit.nl> schreef in bericht 
news:84.B8.14828.0B550934@pb1.pair.com...
> Nice start (your url (function list) doens't seem to work yet by the way).
>
> Just my 2 cents:
>
> I don't like the '2' at all. I'd rather see nltobr() and dectohex() than 
> nl2br() and dec2hex(). I do like the idea of loosing all underscores (but 
> I bet there will be quite a number of developers here who want to keep 
> underscores). Removing underscores though, would open 2 possibilities:
> - studlycaps
> - no more randomness in underscore usage in function names (as you so 
> wonderfully explained)
>
> Since function names are case insensitive anyway, it won't be a problem at 
> all, and it'll provide word-boundaries just like underscores do today:
>
> strPos()
> arrayMerge()
> isInt()
> imageCreateFromString()
>
> changes to make this happen:
>
> create alias array_merge() for arrayMerge()
> create alias is_int() for isInt()
> strpos needs no change, except that it will officially be strPos()
> imagecreatefromstring needs no change, except that it will officially be 
> strPos()
>
> The situation will end up 100% BC and aliases can be removed in PHP 7 or 
> later.
>
> - Ron
>
>
>
> "Michael Cordover" <spam_me@mjec.net> schreef in bericht 
> news:43905052.1070208@mjec.net...
>>
>>
>> Sara Golemon wrote:
>>> I say this with no degree of sarcasm or ill-will:  Create a formal 
>>> proposal.
>>
>> Well, you asked for it ;).
>>
>> Goals:
>> - remove confusion when a user thinks about a function's name
>> - develop consistency throughout the language
>> - be backwards compatible as much as possible
>>
>> The basic idea began as "rename confusing functions but keep their old 
>> names as aliases to the 'preferred' version with a view to eventually 
>> removing the old ones".  Well, let's take a look at a few things.  Using 
>> a little bit of counting code and get_defined_functions(), it appears 
>> that there are 510 internal functions containing underscores and 304 
>> which don't (PHP 5.0.4).  The obvious solution appears to be to change 
>> all functions to use underscores.
>>
>> I went through the function list in an attempt to do just that.  Many 
>> functions convert reasonably well - chop() remains chop(), 
>> escapeshellarg() becomes escape_shell_arg().  A fair number, however, 
>> were not quite so friendly.  Should fclose() and feof() remain as such or 
>> should they become f_eof() and f_close()?  fileatime() to file_atime() or 
>> file_a_time()?  Is basename one word or two?  There are also a fair 
>> number of functions like nl2br() - nl_2_br() would be silly.
>>
>> It seems to me, therefore, that we should get rid of the underscores. 
>> Yes, this means changing a lot more functions around, but adding 
>> underscores will just make function names MORE confusing where there's 
>> ambiguity - and that's what we want to remove.  It's one of the big 
>> complains about PHP, that ambiguity.  Furthermore, we don't want to make 
>> substantial changes to function names - doing things like nl2br() -> 
>> nl_to_br() will confuse more people than necessary and may conflict with 
>> existing user-defined function names.
>>
>> So, let's list functions and replace out all the underscores.  We get:
>> http://mjec.net/php/functions.html
>>
>> Well, that's not actually consistent with PHP overall.  cal_to_jd() 
>> becomes caltojd() - that should really be cal2jd() to stay consistent. So 
>> lets do that.  And at this stage I also added some checking to make sure 
>> there were no functions being duplicated.  Well, there was one - 
>> diskfreespace() is an alias of disk_free_space().  That is, however, the 
>> only internal conflict I could find.  That listing is at:
>> http://mjec.net/php/betterfunctions.html
>>
>> There are a few functions I think need actual renaming, for consistency:
>> bindec() -> bin2dec()
>> decbin() -> dec2bin()
>> octdec() -> oct2dec()
>> decoct() -> dec2oct()
>> hexdec() -> hex2dec()
>> dechex() -> dec2hex()
>> Those are the only ones I can think of at the moment.  If you can think 
>> of any more, please tell me.
>>
>> So, let's look at where we are now.  We can rename all 510 
>> underscore-containing functions to not using their underscores, a 
>> relatively easy transformation.  Similarly, changing '_to_' to '2' before 
>> killing underscores is trivial.  Those bindec() -> bin2dec() etc have to 
>> be done manually.  Then alias the old versions to the new function names.
>>
>> So, if a user knows a function's name they don't have to worry about 
>> underscores any more.  The language is consistent with respect to 
>> underscores - there aren't any.  But you can still use all the old 
>> function names, so we retain BC.  I believe the suggestion was to remove 
>> this by PHP 8, which sounds reasonable.
>>
>> What's wrong with this proposal?  Well, a few things.  Firstly, it 
>> doesn't make all function names intuitive - there's still the word order 
>> problem. Secondly, it's a hell of a lot of work to change 510 function 
>> names and then alias them.
>>
>> Well, the first one just needs someone to go through all 813 distinct 
>> functions (not 814 because diskfreespace() is in there twice) and note 
>> which order they're in, then reorder them.  I'll do this when I've got a 
>> bit more time on my hands - probably early next week.
>>
>> The second bit is fair enough, yes.  It might be automatable?  I'm not 
>> sure and will look into this once I get a proper internet connection 
>> back.
>>
>> The One Big Argument against the more wide-spread use of PHP is that it 
>> doesn't have consistent function names.  If this can be fixed, well, you 
>> bewdy, as we say in .au.  All I have to remember is haystack, needle 
>> except in_array() and array_search().
>>
>> And those are my two cents.
>>
>> -mjec
>> -- 
>> http://mine.mjec.net/