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Date: Fri, 19 Sep 2008 14:31:13 +0400
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To: Alain Williams <addw@phcomp.co.uk>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] php7- dropping the $ from the variable name - rfc
From: dmitry@zend.com (Dmitry Stogov)



Alain Williams wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 11:30:37AM -0700, Ionut Gabriel Stan wrote:
> 
>> Actually, I somehow understand what he wants, considering we'll soon have lambdas and closures.  I mean, in case of javascript a variable can hold as well a function as it can hold anything else.
>> Anyway, I don't think this is the case for PHP.  I do find it ugly to write $function(), but I guess I'll live with it as I did until now.
> 
> So if you drop the '$' the way that you call a function referenced in variable
> 'funref' is not:
> 
> 	$funref()
> 
> but
> 
> 	funref()
> 
> However: the PHP parser will take that to be a call to a function named 'funref'.
> So you need to change the syntax to, perhaps, something like C:
> 
> 	(funref)()
> 
> I can't see people understanding that.
> Stick with what we have.
> 

There is no difference between a function and a variable which holds a
closure in many languages (e.q. JavaScript, LUA, ...), so you don't need
any extra syntax rules.

function foo() {
}
foo();

var bar = function() {
}
bar();

It's not possible to make the same unification with PHP's $, however I
don't see a way to remove $.

Thanks. Dmitry.