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Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:10:56 +1000
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To: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Pseudo-objects (methods on arrays, strings, etc.)
From: davidkmuir@gmail.com (David Muir)

On 19/07/12 04:49, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote:
> On 07/18/2012 01:02 AM, Pierre Joye wrote:
>> hi,
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 9:35 AM, Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com> wrote:
>>> Hi!
>>>
>>>> See the other answers, clear APIs, no more argument mess, cleanness.
>>> Cleanness has nothing to do with pseudo-objects.You don't have to use
>>> -> to have clean APIs, and using -> doesn't automatically make your APIs
>>> clean.
>> I really do not want to have a semantic discussion here.
>>
>> This syntax is sexy, allows us to clean our APIs, and is amazingly handy.
> This makes no sense to me either. How does it let us clean the APIs? Can
> you give an example? I have one:
>
> $a = -5;
> $b = "-5";
>
> echo $a->abs();  // Outputs 5
> echo $b->abs();  // should still output 5
>
> What has been cleaned here over:
>
> echo abs($a);
> echo abs($b);
>
> other than being 2 characters longer to type? It's not like you can
> remove abs() from the string pseudo-object, so you are essentially just
> taking all the functions in the global namespace and attaching them as a
> method to every pseudo-object. Is that clean?
>
> I think there is something we can do around this, but an argument of "it
> is sexy and clean" needs to be backed up with some actual implementation
> details that make sense.
>
> -Rasmus
>

Which is the needle, and which is the haystack?
$pos = strpos($string, 'a');
$pos = strpos('a', $string);

vs
$pos = $string->pos('a');
$pos = 'a'->pos($string);

I'm not proposing to use pos() as the method name, just showing an 
example that this syntax can be cleaner.

David