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Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 09:29:17 +0100
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Subject: Declaring purely static classes [Was Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: Expectations]
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

Matthew Leverton wrote (on 21/10/2013):
> final/abstract (although PHP doesn't allow that combo for some reason)

Final means "cannot be sub-classed", abstract means "must be 
sub-classed"; the combination would make no sense. Specifically, it 
would allow completely illogical code like "final abstract class Foo { 
abstract public function some_method(); }"

Incidentally, Java doesn't allow this combination either; this isn't PHP 
being picky.

The logical declaration for a class that can only be used statically 
would be "static class Foo { ... }". The combination "abstract static" 
also makes sense (for a static class with missing method bodies). 
There's an ancient RFC proposing that here, but it seems it didn't get 
anywhere much: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/static-classes

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]