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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: C-sharp style property get/set syntax for PHP
From: smalyshev@sugarcrm.com (Stas Malyshev)

Hi!

> the rest of the industry, it is very confusing for programmers coming from
> other languages to learn PHP.  A good example is how "==" works
> differently in PHP than in other languages.  In PHP, "===" works like "=="
> does everywhere else.  "(string)'0' == (int)0", for example is true in

Not everywhere. Perl has the same rules, for example.

> explain === to them.  This is because PHP goes against the defacto
> standard.  Maybe it would have been better if == and === had the opposite
> meaning, as to not squash the standard?

There's no such standard. PHP works differently than the language you 
knew before, that's it. If it worked the same, it would be the same 
language.

> Because properties are only meant to be a pretty syntax for a get/set
> method.  Thats it!  I don't know of any other special behaviour in any
> other language that lets you "hide" properties or anything else like that.

If that's it, we probably don't need them. They would just hide what 
happens in the code and confuse the user, which would not know what 
$a->foo means - would it work according to class attribute rules or 
class method rules?
I think, however, this syntax might be useful - for example, Zend 
Framework does a lot of property/method linking, some other frameworks 
do that too, and individual methods might be better than catch-all in 
this case. But that requires consistency.

In PHP, of course, class properties are dynamic, so you can add and 
delete them at will. It is a standard feature of dynamic languages. For 
a person coming from strict compiled language like C# it might be 
unusual, but that's how dynamic languages work.

> You make a good point.  If we can't unset a property, than we lose
> consistency with regular variables which I guess ruins the point of
> properties.

It doesn't have to - if we can find a consistent concept of how to do 
it. But we need to think about it.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/
(408)454-6900 ext. 227