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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Is there a technical reason <?= considered a "short tag"?
From: isroman@km.ru ("Roman I")

Philip Olson wrote:
> On May 30, 2009, at 12:49 PM, Roman I wrote:
>
> > Philip Olson wrote:
> >>
> >> On May 18, 2009, at 5:33 PM, Roman I wrote:
> > This neither answers nor invalidates the original question, though.
>
> Unfortunately I do not remember everything about this but do know that:
>
>    - Decoupling <?= from short_open_tag was discussed, and did not
> happen
>    - Allowing it to be enabled at runtime was discussed, and did not
> happen
>    - The issues with <?= and <? are similar... an invalid PI
>
> I've not read every thread or discussion on this (there are many) but
> CVS speaks for itself. Here's one thought comparing the two viewpoints:
>
>    - http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=120614525214419&w=2
>
> The following RFC mentions this decoupling, yet was declined:
>
>    - http://wiki.php.net/rfc/shortags
>
> And lastly, the general topic of short tags came up recently while
> several people discussed PHP 6:
>
>    - http://wiki.php.net/summits/pdmnotesmay09
>
> In summary: It's a topic people don't want to talk about. :)
>
> Regards,
> Philip

Thanks for the references. I've seen the RFC, but I haven't seen that thread
you've linked to. It does contain almost all things I could say here.
However, I haven't found very strong argument against decoupling in that
thread either. :)

Even without short tags, PHP will not be a well-formed XML processing
instruction in many cases. For example,
<?php $x = '<?>'; ?>
or, more commonly:
<root test="<?php echo $value; ?>" />

Plain <? has an additional problem of affecting the ability to include XML
files from PHP source code. However, it seems to me that using the syntax
above will have exactly the same consequences for XML well-formedness as
using <?=. Since the syntax above is allowed with short_open_tags off,
disallowing  <?= with that setting off looks like an overkill. That's my
reasoning behind starting this thread, anyway.

Admittedly, I haven't said anything new here, but I've rephrased an old
argument in a nicer way. :)Maybe it will do some good.