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Message-ID: <200807041315.05006.larry@garfieldtech.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Namespaces for internal classes
From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield)

On Friday 04 July 2008 7:31:44 am Lars Strojny wrote:
> Hi Johannes,

> Alright, that's what my RFC was aiming for. Maybe from the wrong
> direction. I wanted to do it exemplary for SPL and go on further for all
> the other extensions we bundle in core. Namespacing everything is the
> only way to reliably avoid collisions as the other option would be to
> prefix anything except core. But what if we move an extension out of
> core, should it be prefixed than?
>
> cu, Lars

If I may...

=46rom a userland perspective, the potential pitfall I see with namespacing=
 PHP=20
core stuff is that namespaces allow you to completely rename something.  If=
=20
you have to "use" something in order to use it, the odds are quite good of=
=20
different people using different aliased names, even if they don't need to.=
 =20
I have worked with people who I am certain would do the following just to b=
e=20
difficult (or because they don't actually realize what a bad idea the=20
following is):

use Spl::Lists::Queue as MyFancyArray;
$f =3D new MyFancyArray();
=2E..

Naturally you can't prevent that for namespaced code without removing alias=
es,=20
which is not an option, so some of that is going to happen anyway.  But it=
=20
would really really suck if I have to keep track of what PHP core/SPL class=
es=20
or functions are in use in a given script not just by name but also by what=
=20
this particular developer decided to alias them to because he was feeling=20
lazy on a particular Friday last year.  Doing that for userspace code will =
be=20
challenging enough. :-)

=2D-=20
Larry Garfield
larry@garfieldtech.com