Re: PHP5 Class problem

electroteque wrote:

On 29/01/2005, at 12:02 AM, Jochem Maas wrote:

classes cannot be defined as static - defining them as abstract has the effect of being able to only use a given class statically (unless you subclass it and the subclass is not abstract).

abstract as in it is the final base class ?

no abstract as in 'cannot be instantiated' try running the following: abstract class MyClass { public function __construct() { echo "boo!"; } } $mc = new MyClass; the 'final' keyword is used to declare that a class or method cannot be overridden by (or in) a subclass.

variables inside it, or its only meant to stay in the one static method so

yes you can use variables - but not member variables because $this is not defined in functions that are declared static - bare in mind you can call a method statically even though its not marked as static (just be sure you don't reference $this).

i meant member vars , what is the point of static methods anyway ?

difficult question. a start would be to say that static methods offer a neat way to organise your code (sort of cheapmans namespace). PHP5 also offers static class vars: abstract class MyClass { static private $val; static public function set($v) { self::$val = $v; } static public function speak() { if (!is_null(self::$val)) { echo self::$val."\n"; } else { echo "<silence>\n"; } } } MyClass::set("yeah"); MyClass::speak();

sidenote: the php4 trick of overwriting $this does not work in PHP5.

that i cant live with

good ;-) ... the reason it doesn't work is the same reason PHP5 objects are soooo much cooler, namely a rewritten object model. thank the gods!