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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] I think that "Function naming inconsistency" bug deservers
 more attention
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

Please stop with these. We can't keep explaining why function aliases,
<?php6 and deprecating function names that have been in use for nearly
20 years is a bad idea.

There is a reason that REFERER is still around in HTTP. It is obviously
not spelled correctly, but the pain of fixing it would far outweigh the
appeasement of the pedants out there. Does it make it harder to figure
out HTTP-related stuff? Not really, you won't necessarily know this term
even exists until you learn about it. Same goes for PHP functions. If
you understand where they come from you expect them to be named strlen,
strchr, strpos, etc. and if you don't understand their origin then you
simply learn them or let your IDE autocomplete them for you.

And if you really think this is something a majority of people are
interested in, write up an RFC and put it to a vote. And when that fails
write yourself  a userspace "consistency" library that names all the
functions the way you feel would make them consistent and put it out
there. or heck, if you are worried about performance of a userspace
wrapper, write an extension that does it. But please stop posting about
it on internals. There are a lot of real issues we should be spending
cycles on.

-Rasmus