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Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2011 20:13:48 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Var_export tabbing
From: landeholm@gmail.com (Hannes Landeholm)

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If you're looking into doing something that are both useful and good for
learning C, my suggestion is to hack PHP in some way that makes something
possible (in PHP) that you couldn't simply accomplish by writing a simple
wrapper function or workaround. Making var_export use tabs instead of space=
s
is easily accomplished by wrapping it in another function that preg_replace=
s
starting line spaces with tabs.

Reading your suggestion, I almost get the feeling that you believe the only
reason var_dump doesn't have more arguments (or does this yet) is because
nobody thought about it or had time changing it. Changing built in php
functions is not A Good Thing=99 in general. Functions should serve a speci=
fic
purpose, not have a gazillion arbitrary arguments for every possible use
case.

For just the purpose of just learning C however, go ahead. Sounds like a
good start.

Hannes

On 24 January 2011 19:26, Michael Morris <dmgx.michael@gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been trying to think of something that would be a good project to cu=
t
> my teeth on for a first C project in forever and I'd rather work on
> something that might be useful.  While cleaning tabbing on a var_export f=
or
> a test class I think I have an idea.
>
> What I'm looking for is two things. One, is this the sort of thing that a
> beginner to C (not a beginning programmer mind you - I've been doing PHP
> scripting for, gosh, 7 years now) can do.  If so I'll do this just for th=
e
> experience of it because I need to learn how to prep patches and the
> remainder of the process for more major patches - such as the include sty=
le
> I RFC'ed earlier. It looks like if it's going to happen I'll have to lear=
n
> how to do it.
>
> Anyway, var_export takes 2 arguments - the expression to be converted and
> whether to return or echo it.  I'd like to add a third, whether to use
> spaces (default) or tabs for indentation
>
> For backwards compatibility null would mean uses spaces, and use 2 per
> indentation. If set to true a tab character would be used.
>
> Thoughts and input appreciated.
>

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