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Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 15:22:18 +0200
Message-ID: <CAF+90c_zzddpCET94HQfYZG4jQ0kmKvkMW7qCSq=xmP0xrsjbg@mail.gmail.com>
To: Clint Priest <cpriest@zerocue.com>
Cc: Jazzer Dane <tbprogrammer@gmail.com>, Leigh <leight@gmail.com>, 
	=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Johannes_Schl=FCter_=28johannes=40schlueters=2Ede=29?= <johannes@schlueters.de>, 
	"Rasmus Schultz (rasmus@mindplay.dk)" <rasmus@mindplay.dk>, "Etienne Kneuss (colder@php.net)" <colder@php.net>, 
	"Nikita Popov (nikita.ppv@googlemail.com)" <nikita.ppv@googlemail.com>, 
	"internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Propety Accessors v1.1
From: nikita.ppv@gmail.com (Nikita Popov)

On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Clint Priest <cpriest@zerocue.com> wrote:
> I'm not even sure that automatic backing fields are even desired, I never
> felt the need to have them in C# and the only reason they were included is
> because they were a part of Dennis's original proposal.  Eliminating them
> would eliminate this as an issue.

I just did a bit of research regarding this topic and I have found the
following reasons why automatic properties exist in C#:
1. Changing a field to a property breaks the binary interface, so all
code using the library has to be recompiled. If you are using an
automatic property you can safely add additional behavior for it
later.
2. Properties support data binding, whereas fields do not.
3. There are attributes that work for properties, but don't work for fields.
4. Reflection for fields and properties works differently, so changing
a field to a property is a BC break.

I guess that #1 is the most important one (you don't want to break the
interface) and it obviously does not apply to PHP. Points #2 and #3
also don't apply as PHP has neither data binding not attributes. #4
also doesn't seem to apply because ReflectionPropertyAccessor defines
all the methods that ReflectionProperty defines, so changing
field->property should be okay there too.

From that I would conclude that the automatic properties are really
not needed in PHP. I think they will only cause confusion as to when
one should use `public $name;` and when one should use `public $name {
get; set; };`.

The only thing I'm not sure about is how read-only / write-only
properties rely on automatic properties with your current
implementation. If the automatic properties aren't needed there
either, then I think they can be safely removed.

Nikita