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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Inconsistencies in 5.3
From: stas@zend.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

Hi!

> Ideally someone would summarize the discussion (or maybe two people, one 
> from each "camp") and then we can have a vote. Make it an RFC or 

OK, here it goes again:

When we adopt some syntax, especially syntax matching some other 
language, we do not just introduce an otherwise meaningless sequence of 
symbols to be learned by users. We introduce concepts, and we create 
associative links with other languages. So, if we introduced the syntax 
for namespaces that is used by C++ - i.e. braces, we would imply that it 
has all the properties that C++ one has and that we encourage the usage 
patterns that C++ users adopt. Namely, that namespaces can be nested, 
that they are hierarchical, that namespaces can be used in any place in 
the file, just for one function/class or even variable without any 
influence on the surroundings, that using multiple namespaces in the 
same file, along with global space, is completely OK.

However, the usage that we want to promote in PHP is very different - we 
want to encourage users to use one namespace per file (except for number 
of hacks that basically pack multiple logical files into one physical 
file), that namespace is to encompass big structured pieces of code and 
not to be used in random in-and-out fashion.

Added to that, braced namespaces would imply additional (and 
unnecessary) level of hierarchy and indentation for most editors and 
code formatters. Of course, special exception can be programmed into 
them to make namespace{} behave in a different way from all other 
constructs having {} blocks, but this would be working on solving the 
problem that we ourselves created, quite unnecessarily.

With all that, there's not one thing that syntax with {} enables us to 
do and that is not possible to do right now (and that we want to do :). 
Only reason presented for this change is the misguided notion of 
"consistency", grounded in the belief that semantically different 
constructs must look the same, because that way they will be... well, 
"consistent". While similarity in function in many cases should produce 
similarity in looks, I believe there's substantial semantic difference 
between namespaces and classes or functions, enough to make them use 
different syntax, especially when it better fits the function namespaces 
are to serve in PHP.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect
stas@zend.com   http://www.zend.com/
(408)253-8829   MSN: stas@zend.com