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Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 14:00:49 +0200
To: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
Cc: Aidan Lister <aidan@php.net>,internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Named arguments revisited
From: zeev@zend.com (Zeev Suraski)

At 12:37 15/01/2006, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
>Zeev Suraski wrote:
>>At 09:51 15/01/2006, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
>>>Aidan Lister wrote:
>>>>Are the PHP group prepared to accept and implement a named 
>>>>parameters patch?
>>>
>>>As far as I am concerned it would depend on the patch.  If you can 
>>>come up with a way to do it with requiring rewriting all 4000+ 
>>>functions out there, go for it.
>>As Andi said, that's hardly the big issue (we could have provided 
>>it as a userland feature, not applicable to internal functions, or 
>>applicable to just a small subset of them).
>>The big issue is whether or not we want that feature in the 
>>language, and the answer appears to be no.
>
>Well, having half of a feature like that by only making it work in 
>some places is what I think many folks are against.  I don't think 
>the answer is no if we had a clean and consistent way to implement 
>it.  I would certainly be all for it in that case.

Ok, so we're split.  I actually don't think it's a must to have all 
functions adhere to this new method of calling (I don't think it's 
necessary, but even if it was - it's probably just a few days of 
work).  It's definitely not the implementation which is the problem, 
as with other cases, we have enough bright people on board here that 
could figure it out if we wanted to go ahead with it.

It's adding another core level feature that's useful in very rare 
cases, and that adds another layer of complexity, that is the problem 
in my (and many others') opinion.  And it becomes even much worse if 
we support it throughout the entire language, as it means it'll 
become popular not only in these rare cases where it's really useful, 
but throughout everyday usage (as is the case with about anything, 
some people prefer one way of doing things, and others prefer another).

Thankfully, regardless of the reasoning, the bottom line is no.

Zeev