PHP 4.0 Bug #5377 Updated: Using :: on instance functions / future devolpment of PHP

ID: 5377 User Update by: waldschrott@kiffen.de Status: Open Bug Type: Feature/Change Request Description: Using :: on instance functions / future devolpment of PHP // another mail... That is another weakness in the language, which leads to abominations such as stdClass. PHP reports the TYPE of "$o = new C;" as "object", but does not report the CLASS of $o. That means that classes are not types and when you set the type of a variable to object, it has no class at all. What is an object? Think of it as I have outlined in a previous post, as a hash containing all instance variables plus a hidden variable "isa" pointing to the class of that object. You can serialize() that easily to (classname, name/type/value of all instance variables). What is a class? Think of it as I have outlined, as a hash containing all instance methods, plus all class variables, plus all class methods plus hidden instance variable "isa" pointing to Metaclass. At the moment you cannot properly serialize() that. One way to serialize that is to generate autoloader code for the include file defining that class, but that assumes a 1:1 relationship between classes and files. It would be much more elegant to serialize() a class as the values of all class variables, plus the compiled bytecode of all instance and class functions. That way you break the 1:1 relationship between classes and include files, you get an easy way to manipulate precompiled bytecode, and you solve the undefined class problem when using session variables, as the code of serialized objects becomes part of the session (and then you store session objects in shared memory, and the magic really happens, but that is for another discussion). Full Bug description available at: http://bugs.php.net/?id=5377