Newsgroups: php.internals Path: news.php.net Xref: news.php.net php.internals:73101 Return-Path: Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm Delivered-To: mailing list internals@lists.php.net Received: (qmail 21375 invoked from network); 13 Mar 2014 09:05:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO lists.php.net) (127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 13 Mar 2014 09:05:31 -0000 Authentication-Results: pb1.pair.com smtp.mail=lester@lsces.co.uk; spf=permerror; sender-id=unknown Authentication-Results: pb1.pair.com header.from=lester@lsces.co.uk; sender-id=unknown Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain lsces.co.uk from 217.147.176.204 cause and error) X-PHP-List-Original-Sender: lester@lsces.co.uk X-Host-Fingerprint: 217.147.176.204 mail4.serversure.net Linux 2.6 Received: from [217.147.176.204] ([217.147.176.204:39377] helo=mail4.serversure.net) by pb1.pair.com (ecelerity 2.1.1.9-wez r(12769M)) with ESMTP id 34/41-12560-7D471235 for ; Thu, 13 Mar 2014 04:05:30 -0500 Received: (qmail 4169 invoked by uid 89); 13 Mar 2014 09:05:24 -0000 Received: by simscan 1.3.1 ppid: 4155, pid: 4166, t: 0.0819s scanners: attach: 1.3.1 clamav: 0.96/m:52 Received: from unknown (HELO linux-dev4.lsces.org.uk) (lester@rainbowdigitalmedia.org.uk@81.138.11.136) by mail4.serversure.net with ESMTPA; 13 Mar 2014 09:05:24 -0000 Message-ID: <53217503.9010307@lsces.co.uk> Date: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 09:06:11 +0000 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:27.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/27.0 SeaMonkey/2.24 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: PHP internals References: <531EE602.3090207@lsces.co.uk> <531EEE2A.2000602@googlemail.com> <531F0146.5010701@lsces.co.uk> <53202DC5.4010306@googlemail.com> <532033E1.60602@lsces.co.uk> <53203687.7090405@googlemail.com> <532037F4.6020204@googlemail.com> <532049BB.2080605@lsces.co.uk> <53204C6B.3000506@googlemail.com> <5320511A.7040606@lsces.co.uk> <5320F554.5000109@lerdorf.com> In-Reply-To: <5320F554.5000109@lerdorf.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Unicode strings? From: lester@lsces.co.uk (Lester Caine) Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: >>>> Unicode variable names ARE secondary, but if the handling of unicode >>>> >>>works as >>>> >>>well as it seems to be for me then it may be an option that can be >>>> >>>considered. >>> >> >>> >>http://3v4l.org/kWb0U >>> >>Please help me, what is this about? >> > >> >Exactly what has already been discussed? >> >You can use unicode strings in many areas of PHP, but it is not by >> >design, but rather as the result of 'holes' in the design. > That's not a hole in the design. It was quite deliberate and it had > little to do with Unicode at the time. It was a deliberate effort to not > artificially limit identifiers beyond that which the language syntax > naturally prevented. Think ; , { } ( ) etc. It is a 'hole' in so far as it does allow unicode strings to be used in places where one of the proposals to tidy up unicode support is to close that hole. That the design decision at the time allowed unicode through while preventing other 'invalid' identifiers was probably correct but there are a number of those 'holes' (not just unicode ones) which people are now trying to close and it is identifying new rules that we are trying to do for PHP6? My memory these days is not as good as it used to be and 30 years ago I could identify line numbers of programs while on the phone to customers. Today I have trouble remembering the customer rang :( Another reason why these subtle changes to how things work become more annoying, habit is the long term memory. But I think that one of the previous discussions on the very point of variable names was to allow limited use of them? So closing that hole now would be a major BC break? -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk