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Date: Sun, 11 Apr 2004 01:47:23 -0400
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Subject: PHP4 -> PHP5 incompatibility - classes must be declared before being
 used
From: contact_marcos@yahoo.es (Marc Richards)

Hi All,

I have a couple question re: {subject}.

Can anybody point me to some info on why this change was neccessary (not 
complaining, just curious).  I did some searching and it seems to relate 
to objects that use interfaces...but that is all I could find.  If it is 
too complex to explain that is fine; I just want to know whether I 
should keep looking or not.

Are there any edge cases where it would not be impossible to satisfy 
this requirement...say some complex interdependence between two or more 
classes. Sorry I know this is very hand-wavvy but I don't have enough 
OOP experience to come up with a good example.

I read that for simple cases, instantiation before declaration will 
work...does/will this cause an E_STRICT error?

The primary reason for my curiosity is that I recently started putting 
PHP functions that only get used on one page at the end of the page (and 
therefore calling the function before it is defined).  While this 
greatly enhanced readibility, I was a little wary of this method, 
especially since I haven't really seen anybody else doing it.  Is there 
an inherent problem with this method for functions?  I guess the 
alternative would be to put it an included file (even though it is only 
included on one page).  Is that what most people do?

Along those lines, is there any performance penalty for using 
__autoload() to load my php classes if I am using a code cache like APC?

Does __autoload() work for functions?


Marc