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Subject: Re: AW: [PHP-DEV] Namespace resolution
From: stas@zend.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

> import Name::Space;
> // only stuff from Name::Space available, no PHP internal stuff
> import __php__;
> // now PHP's classes are loaded, too.

So "import php" make internal classes always take priority even when 
there's a class in this namespace by that name? But you could achiever 
the same just by avoiding naming classes the same as internal classes, 
you surely know which classes are in your own namespace? Since in both 
cases code change is needed, why that one is better? If you created 
Name::Space::DateTime, surely there was some intent in having it named 
specifically the same as DateTime class in PHP?

> issues. My statement 'doing a "use __php__" is not a tall order' (which 
> means it's not asking much from the developer to do that) from one of 

Not using names of classes same as internal classes is not a big deal 
either - all PHP programmers do it right now :) I just don't see any 
added value in inventing artificial syntax constructs which don't do 
what they implied meaning is (they don't import anything) but instead 
change engine rules.

> the previous mails was referring to just that. Think of other languages 
> with namespace/package concepts. If you want to use java's date/time 
> features, you need to do some kind of import java.util.blah stuff, too. 

Java package system is very different. For starters, they don't have 
global space at all. And they have offline compilation stage which 
verifies all the dependencies.

> I don't think that PHP's internal stuff needs to be magically available. 
> We can force developers to explicitly request access to it.

We can, but we should not. Internal classes are internal for a reason - 
people use them a lot. Making it hard to access frequently used classes 
to enable rarely used functionality is not the right way to go.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
stas@zend.com   http://www.zend.com/
(408)253-8829   MSN: stas@zend.com