Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:46813
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain lerdorf.com from 209.85.220.225 cause and error)
Message-ID: <4B55EABA.6040204@lerdorf.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 09:24:10 -0800
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.23 (X11/20090817)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Eddie Drapkin <oorza2k5@gmail.com>
CC: internals@lists.php.net
References: <4B54FC87.8070106@zend.com> <4F.56.22457.408955B4@pb1.pair.com>	 <4B55D850.8000604@zend.com>	 <68de37341001190820p486b7c31o5689ab5554b8d260@mail.gmail.com>	 <4B55E591.8060708@lerdorf.com> <68de37341001190918x18d4d026ie8cac60b23d59c42@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <68de37341001190918x18d4d026ie8cac60b23d59c42@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: function call chaining
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

Eddie Drapkin wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 12:02 PM, Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com> wrote:
>> Eddie Drapkin wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com> wrote:
>>>> The second was next on my list, while the first seems to me kind of exotic -
>>>> why create object only to call one method and immediately drop it? Why this
>>>> method is not static then?
>>>
>>> Why would this imply "dropping" the object?
>>>
>>> This:
>>>    $foo = (new bar())->someSetter();
>>> Looks a lot better than this
>>>    $foo = new bar();
>>>    $foo->someSetter();
>> The second version is much clearer.  You know exactly what $foo is.  In
>> the shortened version you have no idea what $foo is without reading the
>> code for the someSetter() method.  On first glance I would assume that
>> $foo would be the success/failure return of the setter and that the
>> object is dropped.
>>
>> -Rasmus
>>
> 
> I don't think that's necessarily a fair statement to make.  If you
> were working within a set of guidelines, or even within just a style,
> that "dictated" that setters return $this consistently across several
> class (or even all of them), it wouldn't be any less clear than the
> second.   Assuming that you had no idea what the class did, or what
> any of its methods returned, you could make the argument that the
> former is less readable, but then again, if you're making wild guesses
> at what methods return without reading code/documentation, you've got
> bigger issues than the readability of a constructor + method call.

Wild guesses?  The point is that it doesn't matter what the setter
returns in the longer version because we know for a fact that the return
is dropped whereas it matters a lot in the shorter version and that is
where most people will guess wrong.  And guess what, most people don't
read documentation.  Trust me on this one.

-Rasmus