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Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 05:37:26 -0500
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Subject: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Property Accessors v1.2 : Internal Accessor Method
 Visibility / Callability
From: cpriest@zerocue.com (Clint Priest)

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I'm opening up several new threads to get discussion going on the 
remaining "being debated" categories referenced in this 1.1 -> 1.2 
change spec:
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/propertygetsetsyntax-as-implemented/change-requests

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some people are in favor of the internal functions being generated by an 
accessor declaration should be invisible and non-callable directly. 
Others are in favor of leaving them visible and callable.

*Type 1 ( Userland Programmer )**
*
As a userland programmer, someone who cares nothing for "how" php works, 
only how their own code works. If they define an accessor they expect to 
see an accessor, reflection should reflect that there are accessors and 
no other "methods" they did not explicitly define. If they were to 
reflect on all of the methods of their class and see a number of 
__getHours() they may be confused as to why or where this function came 
from. From their perspective, they have defined an accessor and "how" 
that accessor works on the inside is of no importance to them and only 
seeks to complicate or confuse matters when they are exposed to these 
"implementation details" of the php language its-self. If you tried to 
set a value such as $obj?abc = 1 through an accessor which could not be 
set, you would probably want to see an error like: Warning, cannot set 
Class?abc, no setter defined.

*Type 2 ( Internals Programmer )**
*
As an internals programmer, you want nothing hidden from you. If an 
accessor implements special __getHours() methods to work its magic, then 
you want to see them, you want to call them directly if you so choose. 
In effect you want nothing hidden from you. In this case you probably 
don't even want Reflection to reflect accessors as anything different 
than specially formatted and called methods on the class. This can be 
understandable because you want all information available to you. You 
would probably not be confused if you wrote $obj?abc = 1 and got back an 
error like "Fatal Error: Class->__setAbc() function does not exist.

*Unfortunately 80 to 95% of all people who use PHP are of the first type.**
*
Revealing these internal matters to them would only leave them confused, 
possibly frustrated and likely asking about it to the internals mailing 
list to answer (repeatedly).
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thoughts?

-- 
-Clint


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