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Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2008 00:47:08 +0200
Reply-To: Marcus Boerger <helly@php.net>
Message-ID: <1848943374.20081009004708@marcus-boerger.de>
To: Jeremy <jeremy@pinacol.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: SPL Comparator interface
From: helly@php.net (Marcus Boerger)

Hello Jeremy,

Wednesday, October 8, 2008, 12:50:23 AM, you wrote:

> Something that would be extremely useful is a comparator interface in 
> SPL, which could be used to easily implement sorting for objects.

> Example:

> class Foo implements Comparator
> {
>         // is numeric for this example
>         public $bar;

>         //implements compare method from Comparator interface
>         public function compare($that)
>         {
>                 //simple example; will return < 1 if this is less
>                 //than that; zero if they're equal; > 1 if this is
>                 //greater than that
>                 return $this->bar - $that->bar;
>         }
> }


> Then, if I had an array of Foo objects, I could just call some kind of 
> spl_sort function on the array which would use my comparator to sort them.

> I realize this can be kludged with usort(), but I think there should be 
> a better, OOP-ier way to do it.

And for that exact reason we are adding closures in PHP 5.3.

Best regards,
 Marcus