Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:93842
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain googlemail.com designates 74.125.82.53 as permitted sender)
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <3B.01.10476.B3865575@pb1.pair.com>
References: <CAFKaYMq2cfNyhbfmAeaC8cetfnN9cvO_wy+EZVgNkZwAGju3JQ@mail.gmail.com>
	<3B.01.10476.B3865575@pb1.pair.com>
Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 13:47:42 +0100
Message-ID: <CAFKaYMpX2=TgkVoprVPSnG-sOnn1m1SoJTC8LCJfeZLtcHugAg@mail.gmail.com>
To: Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001a1130ccf07b584905349b7a29
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Opinion on function/method name overloading
From: codekestrel@googlemail.com (Dominic Grostate)

--001a1130ccf07b584905349b7a29
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Thanks.  I only wanted some quick input into whether it was worth pursing
before I do something daft.. like build it :)

All I wanted to know was, if the technicalities could be worked out, and a
performance boost was possible, would people still dislike it.  I'd still
like to see it added, but I admit it was a long shot.

Thanks,
Dominic
On 6 Jun 2016 1:10 p.m., "Andrea Faulds" <ajf@ajf.me> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Others have already raised good technical points (performance, how to
> distinguish when we have dynamic/weak typing), but I'd like to offer
> another argument against it, that is, that even if it were possible we
> might not want overloading anyway.
>
> From my perspective, function and method overloading in languages like C++
> or C# is useful for mainly two reasons: allowing omitting unnecessary
> arguments (or, allowing providing additional, more specific arguments), and
> accepting multiple types for arguments.
>
> However, we already have solutions for both of these in PHP. PHP's
> functions and methods can have optional parameters for which you do not
> have to provide an argument, and because PHP is dynamically-typed, a
> parameter can accept an argument of any type (and within the function body
> discriminate between types) if it needs to. Also, PHP has fewer and more
> generalised types than some other languages do, so where a C# method might
> have overloaded versions taking a UInt8, UInt16, UInt32, SInt8, SInt16 and
> so on, an equivalent PHP method might only take PHP's single universal
> integer type.
>
> Of course, this doesn't perfectly cover all the use cases of overloading.
> You can't, for example, directly express in PHP that a function takes one
> argument or another, but not both. That said, however, I don't think this
> is necessarily a big problem: you can write two functions with different
> names.
>
> Having to write differently-named functions may well be a good thing, too,
> speaking from having had to deal with APIs in languages where a "single"
> method can have more than a dozen overloaded forms, each behaving
> differently, yet they all look confusingly similar at the call-site.
>
> Anyway, thank you for asking!
>
> --
> Andrea Faulds
> https://ajf.me/
>
> --
> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>
>

--001a1130ccf07b584905349b7a29--