Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:94958
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 74.125.82.45 as permitted sender)
To: internals <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <CADqTB_gBFM_2yNDQemPs68Fab4Hbd8pGj38a3-HSQ+CRcnDyvA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAF+90c9td1bt2zCbGfXdbGtFO-4qhJuJnkAEdsQDaH+wATDOmA@mail.gmail.com>
 <CAFMT4NpFBCJW1x3Yxz3FDx+6JGcdaGXZuBseEOaxXG0fnFHV0g@mail.gmail.com>
 <de01a2d6-f03a-834d-b211-213a6f4cca1e@gmail.com>
 <CAFMT4NppJ2+rO7Y9=kqSrYhwHGDQ_faSSPGmaSY6sZPRrOKCtQ@mail.gmail.com>
 <33781781-2a63-78c1-68a1-9e19ad720d8d@gmail.com>
 <CAFMT4NrHmn71UzqMNPTJe18M-9OjgsG2YDsdhhNJ-vfrsYu5yw@mail.gmail.com>
 <1d89ec68-de5e-2670-aed1-f12872c073c3@gmail.com>
 <CADqTB_gZJgtV2rVhzMd_ExpfXxW-w0wR8GVfNXJc6wFO6DOQmA@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <aaa65a04-d349-62ae-fd47-3901a6afeefe@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 8 Aug 2016 23:04:00 +0100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:45.0) Gecko/20100101
 Thunderbird/45.2.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
In-Reply-To: <CADqTB_gZJgtV2rVhzMd_ExpfXxW-w0wR8GVfNXJc6wFO6DOQmA@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Function auto-loading
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

On 08/08/2016 21:15, Rasmus Schultz wrote:
> A function resolver would simply need to return a callable:
>
> register_function_resolver(function ($name) {
>         if ($name === "html") {
>             return function ($str) {
>                 return htmlspecialchars($str, ENT_HTML5);
>             };
>         }
>
>         if (substr($name, 0, 5) === "iter\\") {
>             require_once VENDOR_PATH."/nikic/iter/src/bootstrap.php";
>             return $name;
>         }
>     });
>
> This mechanism is probably a lot easier to explain and understand - 
> and works equally for global or namespaced functions.

I don't quite follow what you're suggesting here. When does this 
"function resolver" get called? Why does returning a callable rather 
than just defining the function help with the problems we've been 
discussing?


> Okay, so it doesn't deal with namespaced constants, and maybe this is 
> me being opinionated, but who's going to import constants one by one? 
> Constants are usually better off grouped together in a class. Although 
> I don't suppose there's any reason this concept couldn't be expanded 
> to work for constants as well, for completeness at least - though I 
> have doubts that very many people would care...

It's not a case of importing constants - or, in most cases, functions - 
one by one. As I've mentioned a couple of times, an RFC on static 
classes [https://wiki.php.net/rfc/abstract_final_class] and various 
similar discussions are frequently met with "you shouldn't be using a 
class to group static items, use a namespace instead". For that we need 
"namespace autoloading", which in practice means autoloading any of the 
items you can put in a namespace. We can already autoload classes, so 
that leaves constants and functions.

Regards,

-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]