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Date: Mon, 23 Jun 2008 09:57:09 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] LSB forward_static_call()
From: stas@zend.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

Hi!

> It seems natural to think of LSB as a language feature, and so it
> doesn't feel right to have it partly implemented as a keyword, and
> then fix the problematic part as function.

There's nothing wrong with functions - call_user_* are functions too, 
and func_get_args(), etc.

> We already see how call_user_func is painful to use (i.e. with methods
> that use references), that same burden will be put on
> forward_static_call.

If we have problem with using call_user_* with references, that should 
be fixed (do we have description of what exactly is missing - like bug 
report or RFC or something?) But it won't be fixed by changing parent::, 
so how it's relevant here?

> Why would that be no longer possible ? If you want to make a
> non-forwarding call to the parent class, you can use
> TheParentClassName::foo();.

Why having parent:: at all then? You could always use the class name, 
right? But for some reason we do have parent:: - and that reason is that 
using explicit class name is not a good style in this context, it both 
obscures the intent and makes unnecessary dependencies in the code. Now 
imagine on top of that we have name:: and parent:: work differently, so 
you don't have choice but using name:: for certain things.

> It's about 85% slower than a direct call. Sure it's not that slow when
> measuring absolutely, but we're talking about a feature that will be
> typically used in frameworks and libraries, so the amount of calls may
> be quite big.

I do not think extra CPU instruction or two is really the factor here. 
We are talking about high-level language, not assembly language.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
stas@zend.com   http://www.zend.com/
(408)253-8829   MSN: stas@zend.com