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Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2007 17:26:58 -0400
To: Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Order of class resolution with namespaces and
	autoload
From: chuck@horde.org (Chuck Hagenbuch)

Quoting Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com>:

> If it worked this way, you couldn't easily use global classes and =20
> old applications would be much harder to convert to namespaces. We =20
> think that using global Exception is much more frequent than =20
> defining your own Exception - and in the latter case you have the =20
> choice to name it something that is not the same as existing class, =20
> while in the latter case you do not.

If you look at the various PHP 5 class libraries or frameworks, pretty =20
much all of them define an Exception for every package - =20
Zend_Db_Exception, Zend_Http_Exception, etc.

Calling exception classes something other than Exception is kind of =20
like giving up on the namespace - if I have to name my classes, =20
*inside* their namespace, specially in order to avoid global class =20
names, then that seems very unintuitive.

>> The other alternative would be to say that if you want to use a =20
>> global class inside a namespace you MUST prefix it with ::. I think =20
>> this is
>
> We consider it not the best choice. Using of global classes is =20
> ubiquitous in current applications, always requiring :: would make =20
> it very hard to convert them to namespaced code. We think it would =20
> require much more work than just having "require_once" in places =20
> when you override the internal classes.

I agree. I think Greg and I have a better solution: if you want to use =20
a global class, import it. You can use :: if you want, but again I =20
will say that we are talking about code _inside_ of a namespace. It =20
would not add much conversion burden to say that if you want to use =20
global classes in a file you are adding a namespace to, then just add =20
imports for those classes. If PHP provided a PHP:: namespace with all =20
global classes in it (as aliases), then you could just do import PHP =20
and be done with it. People who wanted their namespace to be used =20
instead would just not do that.

-chuck