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Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 17:38:00 +0300
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Subject: why we must get rid of unicode.semantics switch ASAP
From: tony@daylessday.org (Antony Dovgal)


6 reasons why we must to get rid of The Switch ASAP
----------------------------------------------------
1) it gives users false sense of "compatibility" when no compatibility is even planned;

2) it's supposed to mean compatibility, but can be changed only in php.ini, which 
means users would still have to maintain 2 versions of their software: 
one for On and second for Off.

3) 2+ bigger codebase [1] (with lots of duplicates because we have to do 
same things in native and unicode modes);

4) increases the maintenance costs a lot [2];

5) this is yet another reincarnation of ze1_compatibility switch.
I believe most of the people here agree it was a total failure - untested, unneeded and, 
most important, not working thing that complicates user's and developer's lives.
Those who want compatibility may and will stay with PHP5 forever, 
those who need Unicode support will use PHP6.

6) we need to remove the switch ASAP and make PHP6 Unicode-only before people spend 
their time doing useless "compatibility ports" of their applications.


---
[1] http://cvs.php.net/viewvc.cgi/php-src/ext/standard/string.c?revision=1.664&view=markup
Don't click this link if you want to sleep well today.

[2] Here is a typical problem: http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=42861
Try to fix it without looking at the solution and you'll see what I mean.

-- 
Wbr, 
Antony Dovgal