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Date: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 23:45:53 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Revisiting Anonymous Classes
From: smalyshev@sugarcrm.com (Stas Malyshev)

Hi!

>  I would like to propose the following syntax for declaring an
>  anonymous class that does not implement an interface or extend
>  a class:

What would be the use case for such class? I can understand what is the
use case for a just-in-time class that implement certain interface or
extends certain class - mocks, stubs, handlers, etc. - e.g. widely used
in Java in this way. However free-standing anonymous class, not
connected to any hierarchy, does not seem to be very useful - why not
have a real class then, or if it's too much trouble, an anon function?
I know C# has them, but in that case it plays more of a role that
stdclass or just array plays in PHP.
OTOH, if you just make your anon class extend stdclass you have the same
effect but without a special case that looks a bit weird to me. But
maybe it's not a real problem since again you can do the same with
stdclass.

>     $o = new AnInterface {

Looks very similar to what Java does except Java does () and allows to
pass ctor arguments. Are we assuming here anonymous classes do not have
ctors, never call them or something else?

A bit of bikeshedding: if we don't want to follow Java here, we could
also do this:

$o = class {
	public function method() { ... }
	...
} as AnInterface;

This is (partially) stolen from Groovy syntax and follows roughly the
same model as anon functions (definition without the name). Also, this
is a bit like you define anonymous struct type in C and C-like languages.

-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/