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To: "Stas Malyshev" <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com>
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Date: Wed, 13 Oct 2010 10:00:38 +0300
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Process failed? BC and use cases for property_exists() broken in PHP 5.3
From: sv_forums@fmethod.com ("Stan Vass")

> Hi!
>
>> 3) The use case for this function required the existing behavior
>> (i.e. can you safely call property $x from the current scope with no
>> warning?), and that *ignored* when the behavior was changed. We
>> already have Reflection classes for inquiring protected/private
>> properties of a class from any scope.
>
> Maybe we can fix this by having an argument to the function that if
> false, checks only for existence, and if true, checks also for access?
>
> On the other hand, we already have isset() for vars and is_callable()
> for methods, so this use case might to be covered.
> -- 
> Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
> SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/
> (408)454-6900 ext. 227

A flag seems like a viable solution, but I'm worried that something that was 
flagged as a "bug", was not, and caused change in docs, tests and behavior, 
while all agreed with each other before.
This is at beast a "feature request" which should have been discussed as 
such, considering BC break implications and so forth.

As for isset(), it doesn't cover the use case for property_exists(), as 
isset() returns false when a property exists, and is one of these values:

null, false, int 0, float 0, string '', empty array()

property_exists() more closely relates to "array_key_exists() for objects" 
in that regard.

Stan Vass