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Date: Mon, 15 May 2006 09:03:14 -0700
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Subject: fatal static call in php 6.0?
From: truth@proposaltech.com (Todd Ruth)

On Mon, 2006-05-15 at 06:51 -0400, Greg Beaver wrote:
...
> Side note: calling functions statically that do not have a static
> modifier causes E_STRICT.  Hello PEAR::isError()
> 
> This is of course going to be a fatal in PHP 6, but it is now the most
> common E_STRICT I see in PHP4-based code.

Yikes!  Please say it isn't so!  There are significant portions of
our app that rely on php's ability to make "semi-static" calls.  It
would never be worth the cost of upgrading to php6 if that were the
case.

It's not the best style, but we have scores of classes that
have several members in common and need common functionality
for those members.  In php5 and earlier, you can add helper
classes and call helper functions with the "::" syntax.  The
helper can access all of the members of the main class as if
it were its own.  The "right" thing to do would be to step
back in the design and move the members to other classes,
etc., but as practical matter, sometimes that's just not
worth the effort to make such drastic changes to code that's
developed by accretion.

Another use is that we have core data that most classes keep
in an "$application" member variable.  It's sort of like a
global, but to allow for a couple instances of a class to
work on different app data, we've taken the member route
instead of the global route.  php is a nice language for this
in that we don't have to pass $application to every static
function we call.  The static function has access to
$this->application, because everyone who calls the static
function has the application member.

Please don't fatal error this code in php 6!

Thanks for listening,
Todd