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Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2010 17:39:26 +0100
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To: Stefan Marr <php@stefan-marr.de>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal: shorthand object property setting syntax.
From: martin@divbyzero.net (Martin Jansen)

On 27.03.10 17:29, Stefan Marr wrote:
> 
> On 27 Mar 2010, at 17:23, Martin Jansen wrote:
> 
>> On 27.03.10 17:02, Toorion wrote:
>>> $myLongNameObject = new MyLongNameObject();
>>> $myLongNameObject->property1 = '11111';
>>> $myLongNameObject->property2 = '22222';
>>> $myLongNameObject->property3 = '33333';
>>> $myLongNameObject->property4 = '44444';
>>> $myLongNameObject->property5 = '55555';
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> $MyLongNameObject = new MyLongNameObject() {
>>>    $property1 = '1111';
>>>    $property2 = '2222';
>>>    $property3 = '4444';
>>>    $property4 = '5555';
>>> }
>>
>> What exactly do you gain with the new syntax?  You don't save LOC with
>> it (actually it requires one more line) and you still have to type all
>> the property names.  Using an editor with code completion one can
>> produce the code in the current syntax pretty quickly after all.
> LOC isn't a very useful metric anyway...

Of course.  I was primarily referring to Toorion's assertion that the
new syntax is less time-consuming.  In doing so I assumed that typing N
lines of code consume less time than typing N+1. :)

> However, the proposal reminds me of Pascal's 'with'-construct:
> 
> new(pointertob);
>  
> with pointertob^ do
> begin
>   a := 10;
>   b := 'A';
>   c := nil
> end;

Can one do something like "b := this.a"?  This sounds like a huge can of
worms to me.

- Martin