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To: php-internals <internals@lists.php.net>, Dmitry Stogov <dmitry@zend.com>,
 Sebastian Bergmann <sebastian@php.net>
Message-ID: <57211D05.6020002@fleshgrinder.com>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2016 22:11:49 +0200
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Subject: [RFC] PHP Annotations VS Attributes
From: php@fleshgrinder.com (Fleshgrinder)

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From: Fleshgrinder <php@fleshgrinder.com>
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To: php-internals <internals@lists.php.net>, Dmitry Stogov <dmitry@zend.com>,
 Sebastian Bergmann <sebastian@php.net>
Message-ID: <57211D05.6020002@fleshgrinder.com>
Subject: [RFC] PHP Annotations VS Attributes

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I am writing this in a separate thread because of the urgency that I see
regarding the naming of past, current, and future proposals regarding
this functionality.

It was and is proposed to create this feature with the name *Attributes*
as Facebook did in their Hack language. Main argument is to blindly
follow /because/.

On 4/25/2016 10:31 AM, Dmitry Stogov wrote:
> Different languages names this differently.
> I may add an additional voting question - "annotation vs attributes?".
>

It is true and only natural that different languages choose different
names for equivalent features but this discussion is not about taste,
style, nor coolness. It is about natural language, proper computer
science terminology, and what PHP users will search for in search
engines. I already tried to explain this in the actual thread but I
guess my attempts resulted in more confusion than clarification, let me
try again.

#### ATTRIBUTE ####

The word *attribute* has several meanings in computer science and this
is mainly due to its extremely generic nature:

> a usually good quality or feature that someone or something has
>
> --- http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attribute

> In computing, an attribute is a specification that defines a property
> of an object, element, or file. [...] For clarity, attributes should
> more correctly be considered metadata. An attribute is frequently and
> generally a property of a property.
>
> --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_%28computing%29

This pretty much sums it up already. An attribute is the metadata that
is attached to an element of source code. This metadata is anything
unessential that is additionally added but not necessarily required.

  class A {
    var $x;
  }

The `class` and `var` keywords are essential in this example and define
the actual element and the names are required too.

  public final class A {
    private static int $x =3D 42;
  }

Class A has the attributes `public` and `final`.
Property `$x` has the attributes `private`, `static`, `int`, and `42`.

All of these attributes of the class and the property add additional
metadata to the source code elements that define their qualities or
features and consequently their behavior and usage.

http://www.onelook.com/?w=3Dattribute&ls=3Da
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/attribute

Sebastian Bergmann already explained this but I think it is important to
be repeated and further clarified. The word attribute is often used to
refer to properties with additional metadata (e.g. access modifiers,
default values, ...; illustrated above) in an OO context. This makes the
usage of the word attribute additionally to its generic nature ambiguous
as well:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribute_%28computing%29

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/instance+attribute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instance_variable

http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/static+attribute
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_variable

*All* userland implementations that are called /attributes/ in the free
and open world deal with completely different things:

https://packagist.org/search/?q=3Dattribute

Last but not least, Perl has /attribute/ support. However, Perl actually
uses it for interaction with *all* attributes that can be set. Hence,
this is what attributes really do.

http://perldoc.perl.org/attributes.html

#### ANNOTATION ####

> Extra information associated with a particular point in a document or
> program. Annotations may be added either by a compiler or by the
> programmer. They are not usually essential to the correct function of
> the program but give hints to improve performance.
>
> --- http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/annotation

http://www.onelook.com/?w=3Dannotation&ls=3Da

The term *annotation* is not only used by Java:

https://packagist.org/search/?q=3Dannotation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annotation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_character
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_annotation

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd901590%28VS.95%29.aspx
http://docs.scala-lang.org/tutorials/tour/annotations.html
https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/annotations.html
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3107/
https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/Annotations
http://ceylon-lang.org/documentation/1.2/tour/annotations/
http://clojure-doc.org/articles/ecosystem/core_typed/start/annotations.ht=
ml
https://www.dartlang.org/effective-dart/style/
=2E..

https://rubygems.org/search?utf8=3D%E2%9C%93&query=3Dannotation
http://rustbyexample.com/scope/lifetime/explicit.html
https://www.google.de/search?q=3Djavascript+annotation
=2E..

Ignoring these facts just because Facebook did not do proper research is
a total no go. It is also not up for a vote, it is just proper English
and computer science terminology!

Last but not least, it also ensures that users find the correct PHP
manual page when they search for this new feature that might make it
into core at some point. :)
--=20
Richard "Fleshgrinder" Fussenegger


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