On Fri, Jun 5, 2026 at 9:07 AM Casper Langemeijer langemeijer@php.net
wrote:
I think this adds a lot of complexity, for dubious benefit: not having
to start PHP code files with "<?php".Question - what is the performance hit of scanning the file for <?php and,
if none are found, restarting the parse process in code mode?If the hit isn't significant, this might be a way forward. There is the BC
break that files fed through the parser with nothing to parse will start
creating errors, but that situation (a php file with no <?php at all) feels
like an error state anyway.As most projects use dynamic autoloading you'd have to add a stat call for
a second filename, to try both .php and .phpc files. The performance hit
for that is much bigger than any minuscule gain.
I would expect that most projects in production are using composer, and
that they are using the optimized autoloader when installing in production.
That builds a class map to exact file, and no stat call is done.
I would say this is a problem that can be solved at autoloader level, and I
recall I did a similar implementation with what composer does, 10+ years
ago, when not yet using composer.
--
Alex