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To: "Thomas Lee" <tom@vector-seven.com>,
	"Arvids Godjuks" <arvids.godjuks@gmail.com>
Cc: "Lester Caine" <lester@lsces.co.uk>,
	"PHP internals" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2008 12:06:09 -0000
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RE: </endnamespacediscussion>
From: steph@php.net ("Steph Fox")

Hi Thomas,


> Anyway, my point is that there may be other options. Such as putting off a 
> long-sought feature until it can be implemented properly.

OK, since you obviously didn't do any background reading before posting to 
this list, let me direct you to the history behind this decision once again: 
http://wiki.php.net/rfc/namespaceseparator. Let me also point out that this 
only covers the last few weeks; the namespace discussions on this very list, 
in-depth and otherwise, date back some 5 years.

If you read everything linked from that RFC, you will discover that there 
are two ways to implement namespace support in PHP 'properly'.

1) We can offer support for classes only and throw a fatal error when a 
function is encountered in namespaced code
2) We can use a namespace separator other than ::

There is of course always option 3...

3) We can drop the whole idea of namespace support because whatever is done 
will appear 'wrong' to /. readers

Every other option leads to ambiguity in namespace syntax. That's not 
because we need more time to think things over so it can be 'implemented 
properly', it's just straight fact.

- Steph