Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:36311
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain zend.com from 64.97.136.187 cause and error)
Message-ID: <01d401c88bbe$a0e0bff0$c6fc1f3e@foxbox>
Reply-To: "Steph Fox" <steph@zend.com>
To: "Rasmus Lerdorf" <rasmus@lerdorf.com>,
	"Elizabeth M Smith" <auroraeosrose@gmail.com>
Cc: <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <47E3F714.60302@zend.com>  <883216194.20080321193140@marcus-boerger.de>  <47E40848.1060103@zend.com> <47E40C3F.8040601@sci.fi>  <47E40E6E.5030103@zend.com> <47E410C6.80605@sci.fi>  <47E4146A.8010409@zend.com> <fe05d1540803211313j22578632rfabe22f53592eb6d@mail.gmail.com> <47E41765.4080007@zend.com> <111239762.20080321212310@marcus-boerger.de> <47E41C9F.4040105@zend.com> <935033306.20080321223836@marcus-boerger.de> <68.F2.26785.55E24E74@pb1.pair.com> <47E450B1.9040604@lerdorf.com>
Date: Sat, 22 Mar 2008 01:47:00 -0000
Organization: Zend Technologies
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	format=flowed;
	charset="iso-8859-1";
	reply-type=response
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] short_open_tag
From: steph@zend.com ("Steph Fox")

> Elizabeth M Smith wrote:
>> Wow, noisy...
>>
>> I've been in the situation where I use php for templating and the short
>> syntax is much nicer on the eyes.  The ability to "flick the switch" for
>> short tags would be nice.
>>
>> However, like Steph, I've also been bitten by having a simple xml
>> declaration in a file with short tags on that completely breaks things.
>> Parse errors are NOT a good thing.  This is why I'd personally prefer
>> short tags just go poof - having to check all your code so any
>> appearance of <? is echo'd gets really annoying.
>>
>> I'd argue that a <?php= shortcut or something similar would help "split
>> the difference" between the ugliness of the long version and the need to
>> not break php every time an xml declaration pops up in a file.  Even
>> gettext has a nice _() function shortcut which is less typing than echo
>> $blah; in every php tag set, and then you wouldn't be fighting with the
>> potential breakage.  The argument that if some new syntax only goes into
>> 5.3, people can't use it doesn't really hold water here because you
>> wouldn't be able to rely on flipping the short_tags switch before 5.3
>> either.
>>
>> I can see both sides of the story, and really don't have a preference -
>> I'm curious as to the opinions of someone OTHER than Marcus, Stas,
>> Pierre and Jani ;)
>
> There are a bunch of factors here.  In the end it comes down to the 
> purists vs. the pragmatists.  You all know where I fall on that one. <?php 
> is for the purists and <? and <?= still exists for the pragmatists.
>
> Now, someone mentioned <?php= which I am completely against as it breaks 
> the purist side.  A PI tag is defined as <?<label><whitespace> and I am 
> pretty sure the PI label names can't contain '='.  <?php was added and 
> adopted in order to be correct, let's not break that correctness.
>
> Most of the arguments I have seen are basically saying <? is evil and it 
> shouldn't even exist, but that isn't the current question.  It does exist, 
> and we aren't removing it, so the only real argument here is the WTF 
> factor introduced by code that is able to enabled or disable these tags on 
> the fly.  That's the one and only valid argument I have seen. Whether or 
> not PHP code can be validated with xmllint and whether or not <? is valid 
> xml, which it obviously isn't, is completely beside the point.  We all 
> know that when you use <? you are not XML-compliant.  And for the vast 
> majority that's ok.  XHTML is dead because IE, which is unfortunately the 
> dominant browser has never and never will support XHTML.  Yes, you can 
> hack it and serve up XHTML with an HTML mime type and apply various hacks 
> to sort of almost maybe sometimes get it to work in IE, but nobody who 
> does any serious web development uses XHTML for sites that have wide 
> audiences.
>
> So, we are down to a very simple decision.  Does the added WTF factor of 
> dynamically changing short_open_tags outweigh the benefits to the folks 
> using <?-based templates?
>
> My view is that people want templating.  As much as I hate the concept, 
> and have always been very vocal about that, people want simpler templating 
> tags.  They will even go as far as parsing files and generating PHP code 
> on every single request in order to use {blah} instead of <?php blah() ?>. 
> The fact that people are willing to take an order of magnitude performance 
> hit for syntactic sugar is baffling to me, but just look at all the 
> templating systems out there.  And yes, I know there are other reasons to 
> use templating such as restricting the feature set for untrusted template 
> writers, etc. but you'd be surprised how many people just want to type 
> less and have their tags be prettier. Getting these folks to switch to 
> <?blah()?> is a win for performance and sanity in my book.  Yes, it isn't 
> a full victory, but it is still a win.
>
> In order for a templating system to use <? they have to have 
> short_open_tag on for the entire system.  By allowing them to only apply 
> the short_open_tags to certain parts of their code it means that they will 
> write correct <?php business logic and only use the short_open_tags for 
> the actual included template files.  Again, not a full victory, but a win 
> for us in the sense that the actual PHP code in their application will be 
> using <?php everywhere.  They can't get lazy and use short_tags in their 
> business logic because it won't work due to limiting the short_open_tags 
> to just the templates.
>
> I recognize the WTF factor of dynamically changing the setting, but 
> frankly since it can already be changed per-dir from one request to the 
> next on the same server, I really don't see the incremental WTF factor as 
> being very high.
>
> Consider the fact that:
>
> <?php
> virtual('templates/main.php');
> ?>
>
> and
>
> <?php
> ini_set('short_open_tag',true);
> include 'templates/main.php';
> ini_set('short_open_tag',false);
> ?>
>
> Will actually do about the same thing in the sense that the top-level 
> script can run with short_open_tag turned off and the main.php script can 
> run with short_open_tag enabled.  The first version requires that you 
> configure your Apache to enable short_open_tag for the templates/ 
> directory, while the second lets you do it from the PHP level.  The first 
> suffers from being extremely slow and it isn't obvious that scripts in 
> templates/ operate under different rules.  The second is much faster and 
> it is more obvious what is happening.

Ok here's a stupid suggestion.

Is it at all possible to turn off (for all time) short_tags in php.ini BUT 
allow scripts that want to use short-tags to explicitly use them via 
ini_set()?

It might mean a lot of re-thinking... and yes I do know it's not currently 
an option :)

- Steph