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To: internals@lists.php.net, Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com>
Message-ID: <3FCB8E18.8010802@cschneid.com>
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 19:53:12 +0100
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Subject: Re: Summary of string conversion problem
From: cschneid@cschneid.com (Christian Schneider)

I'm not really sure on what's the best way to handle the string 
conversion problem, as I haven't worked with SimpleXML yet. Andi's 
examples on the other hand aren't convincing enough for me so here my 
comments:

Andi Gutmans wrote:
> a) include $obj; will not error out but convert the object to a string 
> and then include it.

I'd expect that in most cases this would be an invalid filename which 
would result in an error message. Nothing lost there.

> b) $obj[2] = 3; (where $obj implements a __toString function) isn't 
> quite defined anymore. Should this work?

The bracket syntax has been deprecated in PHP4 already. Giving a warning 
on a high error reporting level seems do the job for me.

> c) $arr[$obj] would suddenly work according the __toString().

I remember this being requested as a feature anyway ;-)

> go and the way Java chose too (not that I thnk we necessarily need to go 
> the same way but there were some smart ppl who thought of these issues 
> before us).

I don't like Java being used for PHP design decisions really. The syntax 
is cumbersome and has a different focus (static type checking). Don't 
forget that a lot of design decisions for Java were made in the 80s.

My $.2,
- Chris