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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC Operator Overloading in Userspace
From: mark@lange.demon.co.uk (Mark Baker)

On 03/01/2016 02:14, Sara Golemon wrote:
> Patricio Tarantino has asked me to help him propose Operator
> Overloading in PHP 7.1 (based in part on my operator extension in
> PECL).  I think we can expose this to usespace as magic methods with
> very little overhead (the runtime check and dispatch is already there,
> after all).
>
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/operator-overloading
It's something I'd love to see, and would be particularly useful for my 
Complex Number and Matrix libraries, but (as Bishop says) the large list 
of magic methods does feel excessive, and a single dispatcher method 
feels simpler.

But how then would it be possible to overload several operators? If the 
__overload() dispatcher method has to implement a switch on the value of 
the operator argument, and implement error handling for invalid or 
non-implemented operators, it's pushing a lot of complexity into that 
magic method


-- 
Mark Baker

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