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Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 23:28:49 +0300
Message-ID: <8a46ee04177d3adc8df335f450e3454e@mail.gmail.com>
To: Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] PHP Language Specification
From: zeev@zend.com (Zeev Suraski)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrea Faulds [mailto:ajf@ajf.me]
> Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2014 11:21 PM
> To: Zeev Suraski
> Cc: internals@lists.php.net
> Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP Language Specification
>
>
> On 24 Jul 2014, at 21:18, Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com> wrote:
>
> > No, there's no ambiguity at all - 'PHP' is the implementation, as it
> > always has been.  'PHP language specification' or 'PHP spec' for short
> > is the specification.  Absolutely no ambiguity.
>
> So PHP is variously the language (as in PHP language specification) and
an
> implementation (as in PHP).

Not at all.  'PHP' is the implementation, what you download off of
php.net.  'PHP language specification' is the specification.  That's
exactly what I wrote before so I'm not sure it'll be clearer now, but I
fail to see what's hard to understand about it :)

> > Well, one reason is that it would be a horrible, horrible name
> > (imagine us "Happy to announce php-src 5.6!", come on).  But another
> > is there's really absolutely no reason to change the name of PHP to
> > anything at all.  There would be the PHP spec, and there would be PHP.
>
> What does PHP mean here? The language? The vanilla implementation?

PHP along depends on the context.  We're humans, and we use the same words
to mean different things in different context.

"Download PHP"  -> download the php.net implementation
"PHP 5.6"  -> the php.net implementation
"PHP spec"  -> the PHP
"The PHP ecosystem"  -> everything that has anything to do with PHP
"A PHP developer" -> someone who can develop in PHP

It's really not complicated, let's not pretend it is.

Zeev