Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:61295
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 209.85.214.42 as permitted sender)
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CAH-PCH738OneYAv-6jNvN5qXN0SzGyOMfxCd=vZ-qAykL_WZ6A@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAH-PCH738OneYAv-6jNvN5qXN0SzGyOMfxCd=vZ-qAykL_WZ6A@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 16 Jul 2012 15:35:41 +0200
Message-ID: <CAF+90c-BO8Sii6uXmdbixNUh=OuSF_hAAi3ZUqvjnkvjbmdu8Q@mail.gmail.com>
To: Ferenc Kovacs <tyra3l@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] supporting the final keyword for properties
From: nikita.ppv@gmail.com (Nikita Popov)

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Ferenc Kovacs <tyra3l@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> The recent http://www.mail-archive.com/internals@lists.php.net/msg59301.html
> discussion
> made me wonder why did we decide not supporting the final keywords for
> properties as it would provide an easy way for read-only attributes (const
> would be a better choice in performance wise, but then you can only set it
> in your declaration where no dynamic expression is allowed.)
>
> I would like it to work the same way as it does in java(
> http://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se7/html/jls-4.html#jls-4.12.4) eg.
> you can set the initial value either in the declaration or later on, but
> after it is set, you can't change it, trying to do that would create a
> recoverable fatal error (or throwing an exception which extends
> RuntimeException).
>
> What do you think? Would this be viable? Is there any still-present reason
> why we shouldn't support that?

I don't like this overloaded meaning of "final". "final" currently
means "cannot be overwritten by inheritance". This would add a second
meaning which would be somewhat similar to "const" (but only
somewhat).

Nikita