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Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2017 08:04:44 +0100
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Subject: Not autoloading functions
From: rasmus@mindplay.dk (Rasmus Schultz)

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Just a quick thought.

Since the autoloading functions proposal is stalled, how about allowing for
import of static functions instead?

    use function Foo::bar;

    bar(); // calls Foo::bar()

There are two benefits to this approach:

1. There is immediate support for autoloading without any need for adoption
or support in existing autoloaders.

2. Pseudo-namespaces (abstract classes with stateless static functions) are
already widely practiced in PHP - a lot of existing code would be supported
as is.

The syntax when calling functions would be the same.

If we had function autoloading, we would likely collect related functions
in a file anyway - putting them in a class instead gives more less the same
exact result.

The only drawback I can see, is the inability to import a whole set of
functions with one statement - but being explicit about external imports is
widely considered best practice for classes and interfaces, so why not for
functions. Yeah, it's a bit inconvenient, but at least we can move ahead
and leverage existing code without changes or BC breaks. It's not all bad.
It's better than nothing perhaps? :-)

Thoughts?

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