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Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2007 01:58:49 -0700
To: Derick Rethans <derick@php.net>
Cc: Pierre <pierre.php@gmail.com>,Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com>,
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] POSIX regex
From: zeev@zend.com (Zeev Suraski)

At 01:20 18/07/2007, Derick Rethans wrote:
>This sounds like a broken record, this sounds like a broken record, this
>sounds like a broken record.  I've heard this so many times now, it
>get's boring.

I'm not surprised, but it doesn't change the fact that it's true, though.
No matter how many times this will be discussed or disputed, the more 
we break - the harder it is for our users to move.  It's an axiom, 
and we have to live with it, even if it gets easy to repress it and 
take all sorts of opportunities for an end-of-the-season 
compatibility breakage sale.

>  You seem to think that none of the people on the internals
>list are part of the user base - that is incorrect. Most of my opinions
>come forth out of my involvement with an extremely large code base.

I didn't say that, I did say that they (myself included) don't 
represent the PHP userbase at large and I fully stand behind that statement.
Read my other post from a couple of minutes ago for an explanation as 
to what I mean.

> > I'm not saying I represent the PHP userbase, and I don't think Andi is
> > saying this either - but both of us try to take the end user's view
> > when we think about stuff like this, as opposed as the internals@ PHP
> > developer view.  I would go as far as saying that I think we do it (as
> > well as some others, like Rasmus) more so than some others on this
> > list.
>
>Regarding the unicode on/off modes, I don't think you put yourself in
>the developer's view at all. Users are not going to be better of having
>to deal with both modes.

Well, I tend to agree with you that they shouldn't have to handle 
BOTH modes (write code that works with both settings).  But they will 
definitely be better off if they can choose one of these modes and 
develop/deploy for it.

For someone for whom PHP 6 is a non-item (no interest in Unicode), 
moving to PHP 6 and being forced to audit his code will be a 
completely unreasonable cost of migration.  A clear 'not worth it' situation.

> > For that reason I suspect that if you moved the discussion to, say,
> > php-general - you'd see a much more balanced view of the world.
>
>I really doubt that, as that list does not include many people that use
>PHP for internal projects. It's mostly the "geeks" that have time to
>discuss on the list. I know that *many* PHP users don't either know
>about this list, or simply can't be bothered with it.

You know what, I agree.  I wrote something to that effect in my post 
from a few minutes ago.  The vast userbase is mostly comprised of 
people we hardly even get to see.

> > As for ereg - especially in light of the discontinuation of PHP 4 we
> > shouldn't even consider removing it in PHP 5.
>
>I don't think anybody wanted to remove it in PHP 5 - just make it
>possible to disable as an extension.

Great, I misunderstood.

Zeev