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Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2016 19:21:12 +0100
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Subject: Idea: Function autoloading using dummy namespaces
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

Hi All,

In the discussion of escaping mechanisms, it's once again come up that 
functions lack autoloading, and thus are hard to work with in larger 
code bases.

Previous solutions to this, most notably Anthony Ferrara's very thorough 
RFC [1], have looked at adding new modes for the existing autoload 
functions, or new functions alongside, to specify the type being autoloaded.

A common response is that you can just use a class with static methods, 
and thus leverage the existing autoload mechanism. But the introduction 
of "static class" or "abstract final class" was rejected [2] in part 
with the opposite justification: that you shouldn't need a class to hold 
static methods now that we have namespaced functions.

How about an alternative approach where a function inside a namespace 
can be autoloaded using the existing callback, by using a reserved 
namespace segment? So to autoload function "foo\bar()", the engine would 
construct a string like "__function\foo\bar" or "foo\__function\bar", 
and pass that to the registered autoloader stack.

This shouldn't result in errors or misbehaviour from existing 
autoloaders, it just won't find anything to load. An autoloader that 
knows how can then use the namespace path to determine what to load, 
probably something like "src/foo/functions.php".

The focus on namespaced functions reflects the fact that 
one-file-per-function is rare and somewhat unwieldy, so a call to load 
"__function\foo" is unlikely to be that useful in practice.

Note that, like many previous proposals, this could apply to namespaced 
constants, too, using a token such as __constant.

Any thoughts? Good idea, horrible idea?

[1] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/function_autoloading
[2] https://wiki.php.net/rfc/abstract_final_class

Regards,


-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]