Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:33198
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain sambarrow.com from 205.234.132.11 cause and error)
To: Michael McGlothlin <michaelm@swplumb.com>
Cc: Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com>, internals@lists.php.net
In-Reply-To: <473E63A5.7090700@swplumb.com>
References: <8D.46.01128.768AD374@pb1.pair.com>
	 <1195246391.21084.15.camel@sbarrow-desktop>
	 <1195250285.4012.6.camel@johannes.nop>
	 <1195251014.21084.20.camel@sbarrow-desktop> <473E349E.3050704@swplumb.com>
	 <473E35A3.3010307@zend.com> <1195259911.10547.9.camel@sams-room>
	 <473E4B39.6040305@zend.com>  <473E63A5.7090700@swplumb.com>
Content-Type: text/plain
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:08:32 -0500
Message-ID: <1195272512.12249.15.camel@sams-room>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Question about superglobals
From: sam@sambarrow.com (Sam Barrow)

That's a good point too, usually when globals are used at all they are
used in numerous functions It's very rare to see a variable that's used
as a global in one or two functions.

> This assumes there is never a good reason for a super global which makes 
> me wonder why PHP has super globals at all then? What if, because I use 
> it so often and want to differentiate it, it just works better for me to 
> make it a super global? I could always name it with the standard $_ 
> naming scheme so as to not run into accidental use. I don't often use 
> globals but when I do it's usually because it's something I'll use a 
> lot. It doesn't benefit code readability to have the same thing repeated 
> hundreds of times. It's not a big issue but I do like the idea of making 
> super globals easy to do.

On Fri, 2007-11-16 at 20:44 -0700, Michael McGlothlin wrote:
> Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
> >> Well this is very common with PHP, it's very flexible and it's easy for
> >> a bad programmer to create chaotic code and get away with it, but this
> >> can happen with many features of PHP. For serious developers however,
> >
> > Right. This is why I don't think it's a good idea to add one more 
> > feature with very high potential for abuse. Code that changes 
> > behaviour of unrelated other code is usually very bad idea - think 
> > about what happens if some of your functions somewhere among 10K lines 
> > of code used $cfg as local variable and then you added $cfg as 
> > superglobal.
> >
> >> them. No point in holding stuff back from people who could benefit from
> >> it just to protect inexperienced them from their own sloppiness. You
> >> know what I mean?
> >
> > Yes, there is a point in not implementing features that would promote 
> > bad coding and unnecessary surprises for the users. Especially when 
> > the same function can be achieved with existing functionality in a 
> > much better way.
> This assumes there is never a good reason for a super global which makes 
> me wonder why PHP has super globals at all then? What if, because I use 
> it so often and want to differentiate it, it just works better for me to 
> make it a super global? I could always name it with the standard $_ 
> naming scheme so as to not run into accidental use. I don't often use 
> globals but when I do it's usually because it's something I'll use a 
> lot. It doesn't benefit code readability to have the same thing repeated 
> hundreds of times. It's not a big issue but I do like the idea of making 
> super globals easy to do.
> 
> All this forcefulness of writing pristine code from the people that 
> teach people that it's okay to inline their HTML, Javascript, CSS, SQL, 
> and who knows what else into their PHP? Talk about a recipe for 
> disaster. Oh well, at least you didn't refuse to add a switch statement 
> like Python.