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Date: Wed, 12 Nov 2008 05:17:27 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Request for Comments: Horizontal Reuse for PHP
From: sv_forums@fmethod.com ("Stan Vassilev | FM")

> class Helloworld
> {
>    public function sayHello() { print "HELLO"; }
> }
>
> category HelloworldExtras on Helloworld
> {
>    public function sayWorld() { print "World"; }
> }
>
> $h = new Helloworld;
> $h->sayWorld(); // print "WORLD"
>
> This is extremely beneficial for lightweight "extension" of classes 
> without subclassing.

This feature is identical to the C# .NET "Extension" methods. The best use 
of it is for selectively extending the primitive type classes on the fly 
with methods you need (string, int, array, etc.).

The irony in this is, in PHP the primitive types are not OOP capable, so 
with this in mind I wonder how much this functionality would serve to make 
the life of people easier, and how much of it will be just the rope they 
need to hang themselves. The concept of categories and extensions is not as 
popular to the average developer as say classes and interfaces.

Also we can't overload "use" for this as "use" specifically only imports 
symbol names, not actual code, into the environment. It doesn't have the 
knowledge of whether something is a namespace, or a class, or a category, so 
to know how to trigger autoload.

Regards, Stan Vassilev