Req #76797 [Wfx]: Ability to access php compiler (deprecated create_function)

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76797&edit=1 ID: 76797 Updated by: requinix@php.net Reported by: mageia at mokraemer dot de Summary: Ability to access php compiler (deprecated create_function) Status: Wont fix Type: Feature/Change Request Package: *General Issues Operating System: Linux PHP Version: 7.2.9 Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: > makes it impossible to check for syntax errors and handle them apropriate! Thank you for reading the documentation, but while the sentence you identified does explain that you can no longer handle parse errors with set_error_handler(), the sentence immediately before it told you the new behavior: > As of PHP 7, if there is a parse error in the evaluated code, eval() throws a > ParseError exception. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-11-13 17:03:39] mageia at mokraemer dot de I thought eval solves the problem, but it is not. The changed behaviour of eval "Before PHP 7, in this case eval() returned FALSE and execution of the following code continued normally. It is not possible to catch a parse error in eval() using set_error_handler()." makes it impossible to check for syntax errors and handle them apropriate! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-10-16 23:39:51] mageia at mokraemer dot de sorry, I didn't see your comment. You're right, eval solves my problem. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-10-16 23:16:53] mageia at mokraemer dot de is there any advice on how to check syntax inside php? For user contributed code, I really want to check the syntax before using the code. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-08-26 22:47:55] requinix@php.net * https://wiki.php.net/rfc/howto ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2018-08-26 22:47:05] requinix@php.net I'm going to step up and say wontfix on this. The main problem here is that PHP isn't designed to work in a way where it can syntactically validate code and not allow that code to impact the runtime as well. There are assorted performance enhancements and features that assume code being inspected is supposed to be (potentially) executed. For example, class and function definitions are normally hoisted and that happens before any code is executed. Refactoring PHP to support another interstitial layer where code is validated before anything gets interpreted seems to me like a lot of effort for little gain. Consider that you can already php -l a file, plus there are third-party libraries out there that are made to do this. While it's definitely not a good suggestion, note that create_function is basically just a wrapper around eval()ing a function definition so if you don't mind ignoring common sense then there's not much to stop you from doing eval('function() { ?>' . preg_replace(['|use [\w,\s\\\\]*;|'], '', $code) . '<?php };'); If you feel strongly about adding something that can be accessed from PHP code, check out the RFC process. https://wiki.php.net/rfc (though the mailing lists are down...) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76797 -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=76797&edit=1