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To: "'Dmitry Stogov'" <dmitry@zend.com>,
	"'PHP Internals'" <internals@lists.php.net>
Cc: "'Nikita Popov'" <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>,
	"'Guilherme Blanco'" <guilhermeblanco@gmail.com>,
	"'Pierrick CHARRON'" <pierrick@webstart.fr>,
	"'Alexander Lisachenko'" <lisachenko.it@gmail.com>,
	"'Pierre Joye'" <pierre.php@gmail.com>,
	"'Zeev Suraski'" <zeev@zend.com>,
	"'Andi Gutmans'" <andi@zend.com>,
	"'Joe Watkins'" <pthreads@pthreads.org>,
	"'Yasuo Ohgaki'" <yohgaki@ohgaki.net>,
	"'Sebastian Bergmann'" <sebastian@php.net>,
	"'Stanislav Malyshev'" <smalyshev@gmail.com>,
	"'Rasmus Lerdorf'" <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
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Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2015 04:45:03 +0100
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Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] Re: Annotations in PHP7
From: francois@php.net (=?utf-8?Q?Fran=C3=A7ois_Laupretre?=)

Hi Dmitry,

In my mind, annotation syntax was one level lower, dealing with strings =
of unknown syntax, not PHP expressions. Something like :

'*' <whitespaces> '@' STRING free-string-up-to-eol

This supports :

* @requires $a > 0

But also :

* @statement INSERT INTO ?? VALUES (13, 'Phoenix', 'AZ', 33, 112)

Using Reflection, the application would get an array of (STRING =3D> =
array of <free-strings-up-to-eol>) in order of appearance and that's all =
for the annotation layer. Then, the client has the responsibility to =
interpret the strings the way it wants.

Even if it is a valid PHP expression, getting it as a string is not a =
problem. DbC, for instance, would get the string, eval() them and error =
if one of them evaluates to false. Performance must not be a problem =
with annotations. This is what makes it suitable for DbC or offline =
metadata.

If we restrict it to a PHP expression, you need to interpret it at =
compile time, which makes the process more complex. I must admit I don't =
understand the reason, as the only one I see is performance. And I am =
totally out of sync with suggestions to include namespaces, nested =
annotations, or using class constants in expressions. I even feel =
incomfortable because it's just 'PHP code, but elsewhere'. I don't see =
the use case.

About the syntax, I'm probably faulty there, but I don't understand why =
we cannot use doc blocks. That's easy to parse at compile time, the API =
is easy to define, the parser already parses them, and everyone is =
already using that. Existing applications like doctrine just miss the =
API to use it in a cleaner way but it would be 100% compatible. =
Actually, I saw several people refusing to consider doc blocks as =
annotations but I was never given the reason why. So, I am just curious.

Anyway, I don't like the OO features people want to add everywhere. They =
can get strings and inject them to OO, but that's not the role of the =
annotation layer, IMHO.

I definitely prefer the KISS approach.

Regards

Fran=C3=A7ois