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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal to deprecate create_function()
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 18/10/2013 06:25, Pierre Joye wrote:
>> Well, to an extent - it is not true that any PHP script which works in PHP
>> >5.2 will work in PHP 5.5, let alone work identically. For instance,
>> >call-time pass-by-reference causes a fatal error in PHP >= 5.4; unlike calls
>> >to create_function, it's tricky to search for code that used that, and to be
>> >confident of the implications of changing it.
> Comparing a widely used feature, working well with something that
> never really worked (and why we have removed it) is hardly a good
> argument to remove create_function :-)

Absolutely, every proposal has to be evaluated on its merits, and that 
was just an example of a different situation where different conclusions 
were reached. But "it works" seems a little too superficial to me, and I 
wanted to tease out the details of this particular case.

To continue with the call-time pass-by-reference example, it was 
perfectly possible to write code which relied on that feature; it just 
wasn't a terribly good idea. In fact, I came upon this manual page the 
other day: http://php.net/debug_zval_dump The examples rely on the fact 
that the caller can decide whether something is passed by value or 
reference. In PHP >=5.4, that function is slightly more useless than it 
was before.

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]