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Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2006 16:05:34 -0500
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To: Jasper Bryant-Greene <jasper@album.co.nz>
Cc: ceo@l-i-e.com, Robert Amos <shiznatz@gmail.com>,
	internals@lists.php.net
References: <795156743.20060603134212@marcus-boerger.de>	<3928.209.254.223.2.1149477058.squirrel@www.l-i-e.com>	<1944df00606042059v2b6c5717m27afee0b52d52339@mail.gmail.com> <52800.67.108.68.36.1149522925.squirrel@www.l-i-e.com> <44849599.3060102@album.co.nz>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Missing __toString() part
From: cellog@php.net (Greg Beaver)

You miss the point.  The warning that is helpful in debugging, it has
nothing to do with designing things to break, it has to do with
unintentional bugs.  If in 1 case of 1000 in a loop, there is an object
instead of a string used as a key due to a bug (one example: this can
easily happen if you forget to check for a PEAR_Error on return from a
legacy PEAR class), a warning is printed.  With some kind of magic
conversion, this warning will instead translate into a magic conversion
to string, causing unpredictable and very difficult-to-track-down behavior.

Greg

Jasper Bryant-Greene wrote:
> All I've got to say on the matter is that if anyone is relying on that
> kind of behaviour for something serious, then their code deserves to break.
> 
> Jasper
> 
> Richard Lynch wrote:
> 
>>>That *IS* a current behaviour.
>>>
>>>Returns a warning and leaves the array un-modified.
>>>
>>>
>>>On Sun, June 4, 2006 10:59 pm, Robert Amos wrote:
>>>
>>>>As far as I can see, and I'm sure someone will be kind enough to
>>>>correct me
>>>>if I'm wrong, but there is no current behaviour for it, it returns a
>>>>warning.
>>>>
>>>>$a = new stdClass;
>>>>$b[$a] = 0;
>>>>
>>>>Warning: Illegal offset type in t3.php on line 2
>>>>
>>>>And results in an empty array (in this case) so it does nothing.
>>>>
>>>>-bok
>>>>
>>>>On 6/5/06, Richard Lynch <ceo@l-i-e.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On Sat, June 3, 2006 6:42 am, Marcus Boerger wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>  the attached patch closes one more __toString() part. It allows
>>>>>>to use objects that define __toString as indexes to arrays. What
>>>>>
>>>>>do
>>>>>
>>>>>>you guys think about this, should we add it or stay with the old
>>>>>>behavior that didn't allow objects as indexes at all.
>>>>>
>>>>>I use objects rarely, and am not sure I care all that much, but...
>>>>>
>>>>>Seems to me that there is a REALLY good chance that there ARE
>>>>>scripts
>>>>>"out there" that rely on current behaviour of:
>>>>>
>>>>>$a = new Foo();
>>>>>$arr[$a] = 42;
>>>>>
>>>>>Never mind that that's a really dumb thing to have -- Somebody is
>>>>>relying on it doing whatever it does...
>>>>>
>>>>>Whether that is erroring out or just turning all objects into ""
>>>>>doesn't matter.  Somebody relies on it doing the same thing it
>>>>>always
>>>>>did.
>>>>>
>>>>>Don't break that, please, in 5.2 -- Do whatever you want in 6.0 on
>>>>>that.
>>>>>
>>>>>This all seems like much ado about nothing to me.  Anybody brainy
>>>>>enough to NEED their objects as array indices can probably manage to
>>>>>write a function to uniquely identify their/all objects.
>>>>>
>>>>>Sorry if my votes aren't fitting into the schema of voting...  I
>>>>>kinda
>>>>>got glassy-eyed with this whole thread, to tell the truth.
>>>>>
>>>>>--
>>>>>Like Music?
>>>>>http://l-i-e.com/artists.htm
>>>>>
>>>>>--
>>>>>PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
>>>>>To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>--
>>>>Xnyo - http://xnyo.odynia.org/
>>>>
>>>
>>>