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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Namespaces in PHP 6 - ++$take
From: jrhernandez05@gmail.com (Jessie Hernandez)

What does everyone else think? Are functions/constants inside namespaces 
really that critical?

Anyways, I just thought of a possible solution to the namespace 
separator issue, and if it's doable, then the double colon (::) can even 
be used and no conflicts would occur. It seems the biggest problem with 
handling namespaces is determining if a symbol is a class or namespace 
at compile-time. I am no expert in flex/bison, but I was thinking that a 
  state can be used, such as LOOKING_FOR_CLASS_OR_NAMESPACE, which will 
return either a T_CLASS_NAME or T_NAMESPACE_NAME token depending on 
whether the symbol is known to be a class or namespace. The user will 
add either a "using" or "import" statement before the use of the symbol, 
and this will allow the parser to know what that symbol is in the 
compilation phase. As an example:


// BEGIN CODE
using namespace PEAR::File;
$items = File::Find::glob( '!.*\.php$!', $dir, 'perl' );
// END CODE


The first statement will add an entry into a hashtable (used during 
compilation) indicating that "PEAR", "PEAR::File", and "File" are 
namespaces ("File" will be imported in the current file only). When 
"File::Find::glob" is parsed, the compiler already knows that "File" is 
a namespace, so "Find" must be a class inside that namespace, and "glob" 
must be a static method. With this, functions and constants can easily 
be added inside namespaces, as the "using" or "import" statement will 
indicate to the parser which portion of the qualified name is a namespace.

Is this feasible in flex/bison? Let me know if anything needs clarification.


Regards,

Jessie Hernandez



Stefan Walk wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> If the namespace-approach only covers classes it is implemented
> half-heartedly, IMO. I see a lot of "classes" that are just really
> collections of static functions, that's what namespaces should cover,
> too. And disallowing constants only so that : works is a bad tradeoff...
> 
> Regards,
> Stefan