Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:53383
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain xarg.org from 209.85.220.170 cause and error)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 13:27:06 +0200
Message-ID: <BANLkTi=qbj_=dmNv__RN4LkDY4GgbTtGYQ@mail.gmail.com>
To: internals@lists.php.net
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=00221572697ee762aa04a6230324
Subject: foreach() for strings
From: robert@xarg.org (Robert Eisele)

--00221572697ee762aa04a6230324
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

foreach() has many functions, looping over arrays, objects and implementing
the iterator interface. I think it's also quite intuitive to use foreach()
for strings, too.

If you want to implement a parser in PHP, you have to go the way with for +
strlen + substr() or $x[$i] to address one character of the string. We could
overdo the functionality of foreach()
by implementing LVAL's, too, in order to access single bits but this is
really uncommon, even if the way of thinking could be, that foreach() gives
a single attribute of each value, no matter
if it's a complex object with the iterator interface or a primitive. What do
you think about this one? My point of view is, that foreach() is very
useful, which was acknowledged by many ppl via the comments of my article.

I think, adding features like this persuades the one or the other PHP user
to upgrade to 5.4.

Robert

--00221572697ee762aa04a6230324--