Re: public/private class methods/variables

Hello john, On 26-Jul-00 15:51:08, you wrote: >I saw a feature request a few days ago (on bugs.php.net) for the >ability to define public and private class methods and variables. I know >in our application (www.intacct.com) we would have a real use for such an >ability. >I'm willing to take on the task, unless someone else is already working on >it. >I'm basically looking for other peoples' opinions .. would such a feature >be useful in PHP? Are there any reasons not to do it? I have seen a lot of people requesting that, but honestly it escapes my understanding the importance of that feature except for the fact that other (compiled) languages have it and you are used to use it. The way I see it, member access qualifiers are only useful to prevent inadverted invalid accesses that are consequences of eventual bugs. This is all fine for compiled languages because illegal accesses are spoted at compile time, therefore before you ship your code. However PHP is an interpreted language. This means that unlike with compiled languages, the illegal accesses are never be detected before run your code and you never see them until your code is running a production site, if ever. Other than that, I don't know if checking the member accessibility qualifiers at run time would not impose a execution penalty even when accessing public members . Zend developers are more qualified to answer this. Anyway, I supposed not very long time ago somebody was trying to patch Zend to add these features. Regards, Manuel Lemos Web Programming Components using PHP Classes. Look at: http://phpclasses.UpperDesign.com/?user=mlemos@acm.org -- E-mail: mlemos@acm.org URL: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ PGP key: http://www.mlemos.e-na.net/ManuelLemos.pgp --