Req #62655 [Opn->Sus]: Request: optional class name case-sensitivity

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=62655&edit=1 ID: 62655 Updated by: cmb@php.net Reported by: eric at wepay dot com Summary: Request: optional class name case-sensitivity -Status: Open +Status: Suspended Type: Feature/Change Request Package: Class/Object related Operating System: OS X, CentOS PHP Version: Irrelevant Block user comment: N Private report: N New Comment: This feature appears to be controversial (because INI settings affecting language behavior are), so would require discussion on the internals mailing list[1]. Feel free to start the discussion there; for the time being, I'm suspending this ticket. [1] <https://www.php.net/mailing-lists.php#internals> Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2012-07-24 23:51:54] eric at wepay dot com Description: ------------ It would be beneficial in more complex applications to be able to opt-in to case sensitive class names. It's very common to put classes in their own files where the filename matches the class name (namespaced classes often residing in subdirectories). However, the lack of case-sensitivity makes it easy to create very rare and subtle bugs in applications: development is often done on case-insensitive filesystems, and deployed to a case-sensitive production environment. While the obvious answer here is to develop in an environment identical to production, it's often impractical if not impossible to use a case-sensitive filesystem on a dev machine. Other behavior in autoloaders can have similar harmful effects, especially when new code paths cause scripts or classes to be loaded in a different order. I am not proposing that this become the default behavior, as it would obviously break countless applications. It should also not modify __autoload/spl_autoload_register in any way. It would be nice to be able to selectively enable this via php.ini: ; Enable class name case sensitivity ; 0 (default): class names are case-insensitive ; 1: class names are case-insensitive, but using a class name in a way different from its declaration will issue an E_STRICT warning including file and line of class name misuse ; 2: class names are case-sensitive. "class a {}" and "class A {}" can coexist; "A::foo()" and "a:foo()" are two separate calls class_name_sensitivity = 0 I'm aware this has been discussed before (as early as 2003, https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=26575&edit=1), however web app development has come a long way in nearly a decade and I think it's worth re-examining this, especially since it should be possible to do in a non-breaking manner. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=62655&edit=1