Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:39567
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: unknown (pb1.pair.com: domain php.net does not designate 85.214.94.56 as permitted sender)
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2008 14:17:51 +0200
Reply-To: Marcus Boerger <helly@php.net>
Message-ID: <93357385.20080803141751@marcus-boerger.de>
To: "Robin Fernandes" <robinf@php.net>
CC: internals <internals@lists.php.net>
In-Reply-To: <5a8807d10808030407j14f51cb6ga7d917d51c6206ac@mail.gmail.com>
References: <5a8807d10808030407j14f51cb6ga7d917d51c6206ac@mail.gmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Intended behavior of ArrayObject::exchangeArray() ?
From: helly@php.net (Marcus Boerger)

Hello Robin,

Sunday, August 3, 2008, 1:07:56 PM, you wrote:

> Hi all,

> I have two questions about the intended behaviour of
> ArrayObject::exchangeArray() :

> 1. What should happen when the argument is an object?

> The docs suggest that the arg should be an array, but the prototype in
> the code indicates objects are OK too. However, when an object is
> passed, the effect is simply to remove the ArrayObject's storage
> container, which doesn't seem right: http://pastebin.ca/1091256

Seems like an error message is missing there. It allows to take an instance
of another ArrayObject/Iterator and use the array from that.

In case any other Object is passed it is ignored. What do you feel?

> 2. Should the ArrayObject store a copy or a real reference to the
> array passed to exchangeArray()?

> Currently, the ArrayObject container effectively becomes a
> copy-on-write reference to the array passed to exchangeArray()... but
> there is no logic to split the container when it is modified.
> Consequently, the behaviour is very ambiguous:
> http://pastebin.ca/1091266 .
> Depending on the intended behaviour, it seems either exchangeArray()
> needs to take its arg as prefer-by-reference, or the arg needs to be
> split before being stashed in the ArrayObject.


> One way to address both of these issues is to make exchangeArray()
> share the logic that sets the array in __construct(). This way,
> echangeArray() works with object arguments (with some special cases if
> the argument is itself an ArrayObject), and array arguments are split
> before being stored in the ArrayObject.

> Here's a suggested patch against 5_3 that implements this (and
> includes some tests): http://pastebin.ca/1091668
> Note that I'm not an internals or SPL expert, so let me know if I
> missed something.

Seems about right. Can you attach the patch as a text file (I cannot open
the link).


Best regards,
 Marcus