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Date: Mon, 03 Sep 2012 17:20:56 +0200
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To: Andrew Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] $obj->attr::method() is not allowed
From: ivan.enderlin@hoa-project.net ("Ivan Enderlin @ Hoa")


On 03/09/12 17:18, Andrew Faulds wrote:
> On 03/09/12 15:51, Ivan Enderlin @ Hoa wrote:
>>
>> I would like to know why? Is it a compiler related issue or just an 
>> omission? Would it be interesting to fix it?
>>
> There are plenty of examples of this. One from my code:
>
> Can't do this:
>
>     self::$views[$path]();
>
> But I *can* do this:
>
>     $x = self::$views[$path]; $x();
>
> This is because PHP has a very unusual (and IMO bad) system of 
> type-checking at parse-time, by only allowing some specific (although 
> quite varied) types of variable access, and combinations of these.
>
> If nikic's idea to rewrite the parser to use an AST is done, I imagine 
> this could be fixed. We could also add extra rules, but I think fixing 
> the general issue is more important, since it's like plugging two 
> holes in a barrel full of water that's just had a machine gun fired at it.
Absolutely.

PHP has no AST? Why? For historical reasons?

-- 
Ivan Enderlin
Developer of Hoa
http://hoa.42/ or http://hoa-project.net/

PhD. student at DISC/Femto-ST (Vesontio) and INRIA (Cassis)
http://disc.univ-fcomte.fr/ and http://www.inria.fr/

Member of HTML and WebApps Working Group of W3C
http://w3.org/