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Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20060604124441.0da458d8@zend.com>
Date: Sun, 04 Jun 2006 12:47:10 +0300
To: Greg Beaver <cellog@php.net>
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
In-Reply-To: <4482516B.70007@php.net>
References: <795156743.20060603134212@marcus-boerger.de>
	<4482516B.70007@php.net>
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Subject: Re: Missing __toString() part
From: zeev@zend.com (Zeev Suraski)

In case we can't find a solution Andi's (a) approach, I think I like 
the explicit cast approach better than just implicitly converting to 
string.  Rasmus pointed out that it's not clear why of all types PHP 
would implicitly convert the object to a string, and chances are that 
he's not the only person that will be surprised by that behavior.

Zeev

At 06:20 04/06/2006, Greg Beaver wrote:
>Marcus Boerger wrote:
> > Hello guys,
> >
> >   the attached patch closes one more __toString() part. It allows
> > to use objects that define __toString as indexes to arrays. What do
> > you guys think about this, should we add it or stay with the old
> > behavior that didn't allow objects as indexes at all.
>
>I prefer to require an explicit (string) cast to use an object as an
>array index.  The "can't use objects as array index" has actually helped
>me catch many subtle bugs that were slipping through in earlier PHP
>versions, I very much like this fatal error.  I don't see this:
>
>$a = $b[$c];
>
>being much clearer to understand than:
>
>$a = $b[$c];
>
>or better yet
>
>$a = $b[$c->person()];
>
>which is by far the clearest and easiest to debug (and results in a
>fatal error if $c is the wrong kind of object or the wrong string - even
>better for debugging)
>
>Thanks,
>Greg