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Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2012 16:48:50 -0500
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Subject: Call closure stored as object property directly without use of
 temporary variable
From: adamjonr@gmail.com (Adam Jon Richardson)

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Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

First, thanks everyone for the hard work on the PHP 5.5 alpha. I just ran
the tests and submitted some results, but from the little bit I've used it
so far, things are looking really nice.

Second, and to the main point of this email, I would like to be able to
call closures that are stored as object properties directly without having
to make use of a temporary variable.

For example:

<?php
$o = new stdClass();
$o->func = function(){
    return 'Yes!';
};
$o->func();
?>

The above code elicits the error:
Call to undefined method stdClass:test() in...

I realize I could create a class that implements __call() to intercept and
redirect the call to the closure, but this adds much overhead for a simple
approach and also precludes the use of stdClass (I like the option of being
able to cast to an array, and then back with very little overhead.)

It seems as though the parser could be updated to accommodate this
intention, but I understand this could pose a backwards compatibility issue
(current users could have closures stored as object properties and be
expecting the magic method __call() to be invoked instead of the closure
itself.)

Has anyone else wanted this functionality? Has anyone else thought of ideas
of addressing this (or come to the conclusion it really isn't safely
addressable without causing disproportionate amounts of grief?)

Thank you,

Adam

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