Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:64242
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 209.85.210.42 as permitted sender)
Message-ID: <50C670F4.2070001@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Dec 2012 10:32:04 +1100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Thunderbird/17.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Herman Radtke <hermanradtke@gmail.com>
CC: =?UTF-8?B?w4FuZ2VsIEdvbnrDoWxleg==?= <keisial@gmail.com>, 
 Nikita Nefedov <nnefedov@imhonet.ru>,
 "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <op.wo3wsgnzc8onze@debian-nnefedov.local> <50C63A7C.8090705@gmail.com> <CAAUB37BXO3GeFiRBMcew=2dABoyjstFs7-XPEznc+wCWBhW3JA@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAAUB37BXO3GeFiRBMcew=2dABoyjstFs7-XPEznc+wCWBhW3JA@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] DateTime improvement
From: davidkmuir@gmail.com (David Muir)

On 11/12/12 06:59, Herman Radtke wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 10, 2012 at 11:39 AM, Ángel González <keisial@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 10/12/12 16:18, Nikita Nefedov wrote:
>>> So there had been at least two or three messages (subjects) about
>>> DateTime object and everytime there was this problem - people tend to
>>> take DateTime object as mutable object and it really is.
>>> As long as we know, it's not so good - date is immutable by nature. I
>>> don't want to write here why it's so, I will just throw this link:
>>> http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp02183/index.html
>>>
>>> I don't want to change any existing functionality, because some people
>>> already use it, but I just wanted to point out that current DateTime
>>> class is forcing people to think about it as mutable.
>>> My main concerns are DateTime#add() and DateTime#sub(). The problem is
>>> - they both change current object and return it.
>>> I think we could add methods to DateTime like add() and sub(), let's
>>> say plus() and minus(), but they would behave differently in the way
>>> that they would return new DateTime objects and won't change current
>>> object.
>> That will make it even more inconsistent.
>> You have add() and plus() but one changes the object and the other doesn't.
>>
>> If we were going to rewrite php or the DateTime class, it could be a
>> good idea to make those methods  (or its equivalents) not modify the object.
>> But I don't think it'd be a win to do such thing now.
>>
> Another option is to make an ImmutableDateTime class. The DateTime
> class could actually be changed to inherit the ImmutableDateTime
> class. The only extensions on the DateTime class would be the mutable
> methods.
>
>

Would love to see ImmutableDateTime!

David