Static method call with single colon results in fatal error, not a parse error?

Foo::bar();

Output for 5.0.0 - 5.6.8, php7@20140507 - 20150501, hhvm-3.6.0 - 3.7.0bar
http://3v4l.org/F6tXZ

2015-05-12 21:44 GMT+03:00 Bishop Bettini bishop@php.net:

class Foo {
public static function bar() { echo 'bar'; }
}
Foo:bar();

Note the single colon. According to 3v4l http://3v4l.org/Ot3Fk...

5.2.17 and earlier:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ':'

5.3 and later, including 7 and HHVM:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function bar()

Is this really a run-time fatal error? Unless I missed a memo, surely this
should be a compile time error.

Bishop Bettini wrote:

class Foo {
public static function bar() { echo 'bar'; }
}
Foo:bar();

Note the single colon. According to 3v4l http://3v4l.org/Ot3Fk...

5.2.17 and earlier:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected ':'

5.3 and later, including 7 and HHVM:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function bar()

Is this really a run-time fatal error? Unless I missed a memo, surely this
should be a compile time error.

Foo:bar();

is the same as

Foo:
bar();

so it is parsed as labelled statement, and as such is syntactically
valid since PHP 5.3.

--
Christoph M. Becker

Hi,

5.3 and later, including 7 and HHVM:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function bar()

5.3 introduced goto and labels.

foo:bar();

is equal to

foo:
bar();

meaning a label foo and then a function call.

johannes