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Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2010 23:23:28 +0000
To: "Ionut G. Stan" <ionut.g.stan@gmail.com>
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Organization: Parliament Hill Computers Ltd
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] variables in namespaces, was: On closures and lamdba
From: addw@phcomp.co.uk (Alain Williams)

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 01:00:28AM +0200, Ionut G. Stan wrote:

> ** namespaced functions don't make any difference, as variables aren't 
> namespaced.

I never did understand *why* variables were not namespaced.

However, since 5.3 has been out for a while it might make things difficult to
make them - would break BC, unless the following was adopted -- something that
would really make me happy:

	namespace foo;

	var $bar;      // Creates the variable $\foo\bar;

I *still* really want to have something like perl's ''use strict''. If 'var'
is used outside of a function then ''use strict'' becomes switched on, the
way to access a global variable would be to use the namespace \  - first
declare it:

	var $\globalName;

Note that the 'global' keyword would still be used in functions:

	function blob()
	{
		global $\globalName;   // Import from $GLOBALS
		global $bar;           // Import from current namespace
	}

The above might even be extended:

	namespace foo;

	public $bar;   // Creates a variable $\foo\bar this is available to code outside the namespace
	private $fred; // Creates $\foo\fred that cannot be accessed by code outside the namespace

Variables in a namespace would not appear in $GLOBALS.

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php
Past chairman of UKUUG: http://www.ukuug.org/
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