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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] constructors are callable as regular functions.
From: ezyang@MIT.EDU ("Edward Z. Yang")

Excerpts from troels knak-nielsen's message of Thu Jul 02 10:55:48 -0400 2009:
> I understand that. It's not a technical issue - It's more a matter of
> language semantics. Constructors are used for initializing state on an
> object. Basically, this behaviour makes it impossible to implement
> immutable objects in php. It's not a huge deal - I don't remember ever
> seen __construct() called directly.

Au contraire, you can employ this little trick:

class A {
  private $a;
  private function __construct($a) {
    $this->a = a;
  }
  public function make($a) {
    return new A($a);
  }
}

But I agree; stab anyone who is doing $foo->__construct(). Except for
testing. Testing is ok.

Cheers,
Edward