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Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2013 14:43:37 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal: new magic methods for Object references.
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus Lerdorf)

On 03/19/2013 02:19 PM, Matīss Roberts Treinis wrote:

> However, as far as I understand, variables can currently hold values like
> arrays, strings, etc, and object references. Could it be possible to add
> one more possible value to this keen little list 

Not without massive changes across the codebase, no. Everything touches
the zval. Changing it has far-reaching consequences.

> Also, a little overhead is reasonable for the new functionality. It is not
> like we have Pentium 2's in our DC's anymore.

It would have to be a critical feature that pretty much everyone would
use all the time to justify slowing down every variable assignment.

We need proposals for speeding things up by dropping rarely used
features, not proposals for slowing things down with rarely used features.

-Rasmus