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Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2012 13:28:30 +0200
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To: Andrew Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>
Cc: Etienne Kneuss <colder@php.net>, Gustavo Lopes <glopes@nebm.ist.utl.pt>, 
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Remove calls with incompatible Context
From: jpauli@php.net (jpauli)

On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 12:40 AM, Andrew Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote:
> While we're at it,
>
> $a = 'this';
> $$a = new StdClass();
>
> should be an error.
> Also $GLOBALS['this'] = new StdClass();
>
> https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=52428

Hehe, I already caught all those executor tricks, like :
<?php
${'th'.'is'} = 'what I want';

In fact, "$this" is checked at compile time. The compiler checks for
the letters t+h+i+s to be found in the code, (usually throught
strcmp())  and acts as we know.
$this is never checked at execution, that's why we can use such tricks
to do illegal things.
I discussed that with [I cant remember who] (Felipe wasn't it?) few
times ago, and he told me that checking for $this to be used at
execution time would be too time consuming (I assume it would need a
lookup at every variable read operation, so that's why).
Plus, if someone wants to shoot himself in the foot, then let him do it.

Coming back to the RFC subject :
- Excuse me to perhaps ask for too much but: why don't we simply
forbid any static method call to non static method ?

I mean, that's something I've never understood why PHP allows an
instance method to be called statically ? That's a non sense to my
eyes, I've never used such a thing in my PHP  life. That's ugly,
illogic and simply wrong.
If you want to call a method statically, then make it static and then
prevent it from carrying any $this information.

But I see that most of you would prefer keeping this behavior and
somehow fix it by just turning $this to NULL in incompatible context.
I would have thrown an E_FATAL-what're-u-doing error :-p

Julien