It is painful to maintain two APIs when one has actually no benefit
I don't see how it's painful - dual API looks like this:
/* {{{ proto array Collator::sort(array input) U
Sort an array using collation }}} */
/* {{{ proto array collator_sort(Collator coll, array input) U
Sort an array using collation */
PHP_FUNCTION(collator_sort)
{
zval *object;
php_collator_obj *collatorobj;
zval *array;
HashTable *target_hash;
zend_collator *orig_collator;
if (zend_parse_method_parameters(ZEND_NUM_ARGS() TSRMLS_CC, getThis(), "Oa/", &object, unicode_collator_ce, &array) == FAILURE) {
RETURN_FALSE;
}
collatorobj = (php_collator_obj *) zend_object_store_get_object(object TSRMLS_CC);
What's painful in it? Maybe you need a couple of additional methods - like ctor method for functional API - but that should be it.
--
Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Products Engineer
stas@zend.com http://www.zend.com/