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To: Rasmus Schultz <rasmus@mindplay.dk>,
 PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2017 19:00:29 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Not autoloading functions
From: php@fleshgrinder.com (Fleshgrinder)

On 1/20/2017 8:04 AM, Rasmus Schultz wrote:
> 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?
> 

I actually like this idea a lot, something similar is possible in Rust
with Enums.

```rust
pub use self::Foo::{A, B};

pub enum Foo {
    A,
    B
}

fn main() {
    let a = A;
}
```

Loading a set of static methods could look similar.

```php
final class Foo {
    public static function A(): self {
        return new self;
    }

    public static function B(): self {
        return new self;
    }
}
```

```php
use function Foo::{A, B};

$a = A();
```

-- 
Richard "Fleshgrinder" Fussenegger