Newsgroups: php.internals Path: news.php.net Xref: news.php.net php.internals:64754 Return-Path: Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm Delivered-To: mailing list internals@lists.php.net Received: (qmail 40949 invoked from network); 9 Jan 2013 16:20:56 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lists.php.net) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 9 Jan 2013 16:20:56 -0000 Authentication-Results: pb1.pair.com smtp.mail=larry@garfieldtech.com; spf=permerror; sender-id=unknown Authentication-Results: pb1.pair.com header.from=larry@garfieldtech.com; sender-id=unknown Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain garfieldtech.com from 66.111.4.29 cause and error) X-PHP-List-Original-Sender: larry@garfieldtech.com X-Host-Fingerprint: 66.111.4.29 out5-smtp.messagingengine.com Received: from [66.111.4.29] ([66.111.4.29:44183] helo=out5-smtp.messagingengine.com) by pb1.pair.com (ecelerity 2.1.1.9-wez r(12769M)) with ESMTP id 74/9D-02684-7E89DE05 for ; Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:20:56 -0500 Received: from compute4.internal (compute4.nyi.mail.srv.osa [10.202.2.44]) by gateway1.nyi.mail.srv.osa (Postfix) with ESMTP id B577B20751 for ; Wed, 9 Jan 2013 11:20:53 -0500 (EST) Received: from frontend2.nyi.mail.srv.osa ([10.202.2.161]) by compute4.internal (MEProxy); Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:20:53 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/relaxed; d= messagingengine.com; h=message-id:date:from:mime-version:to :subject:references:in-reply-to:content-type :content-transfer-encoding; s=smtpout; bh=RgZSPG6dHHNLx0TIfG5bWv F3RhY=; b=tiNiSDyHTHNqB+HeGBNCCCWu+n9rALXUNpOG80hIDy/Fa5gF4GsshS DGYrULfzmVjzDkMBKyaNemUIpxLXv2sTay0k59gmDvXd2iskI9P4nZGoLUFi3vdm 4NZ0JOBmHdvVqEk2Oj2c6RJwUt1yhSX8ZFgpADqJWziaMxiuHn9Ik= X-Sasl-enc: Yc4JO0YqeaEm9NVhV+oOD7KtYHd2CoiBqpg5qbNC2QX6 1357748453 Received: from Palantirs-MacBook-Pro.local (unknown [209.41.114.202]) by mail.messagingengine.com (Postfix) with ESMTPA id 74B4B4827CB for ; Wed, 9 Jan 2013 11:20:53 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <50ED98E4.7010009@garfieldtech.com> Date: Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:20:52 -0600 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Thunderbird/17.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: internals@lists.php.net References: <50ED4C18.3090806@zerocue.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] - True Annotations From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield) On 1/9/13 9:31 AM, Levi Morrison wrote: >> they are nearly syntactically identical to executable code. > > "nearly" is the keyword there. They lack the ending semi-colon. Sure, > this might mean PHP has to actually use an abstract syntax tree, but > that's long overdue in my opinion. I know others disagree. This is > only tangentially related, so I won't say more. Even if the parser is adjusted to cope with that, it's still an extremely subtle difference for developers to keep track of. Consider the following procedural snippets: @Foo[narf] function something($narf) {} @Foo[narf]; function something($narf) {} The first one says that $narf should pass @Foo validation. The second one says to call the function Foo with the string constant "narf", and then define a function called something(). That's the sort of subtle bug that's just begging for someone to make an honest typo and spend the next 6 hours tracking it down, until he realizes what he did and proceeds to bang his head against his desk in frustration for missing such a "simple" error. Let's not subsidize the headache drug manufacturers with PHP syntax decisions. :-) --Larry Garfield