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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Moving to an AST-based parsing/compilation process
From: ml@anderiasch.de (Florian Anderiasch)

On 09/06/2012 10:47 AM, Sebastian Bergmann wrote:
> On 09/06/2012 06:37 AM, Dmitry Stogov wrote:
>> The only real advantage could be an ability to expose AST to PHP scripts,
>> but only few people may need it.
> 
>  Everyone working on static analysis tools for PHP code needs access to
>  the (canonical) AST. While the number of people behind this "everyone"
>  will be small (hopefully it will grow) but the tools they create based
>  based on the AST will be valuable for every PHP developer.
> 

I fully agree with Sebastian here, nearly all the methods used in the
past to get some meaningful analysis done relied on third party tools,
were immensely prone to breakage or both.

I've used phc up to 5.2 without problems but after that I didn't really
keep up trying yet again another completely different method. This is
such a basic task for static analysis, something not in the core will
always be a second-class citizen.

And yes, the people directly benefitting from this and not indirectly
from the tools produced will probably be quite happy.

So unless something is getting slower, +1.

Greetings,
Florian