Re: Global Annoyance

Hi Bill, For the record, I like having to specify global in each function. What Rasmus says is true and I believe it does force those less experienced to think about what they are doing, when otherwise they might not think about it. Yes, I can see how your functions seem messy. When I need to do something like this, I store things in an array. Say for web_form validation for example: in my HTML: <input name="form[name]" ... <input name="form[email]" ... <input name="form[fav_deer]" ... or in PHP setting them specifically: $form['name'] = 'foo bar clause'; $form['email'] = 'foo@northpole.com'; $form['fav_deer'] = 'blitzen'; Then when you need to use all of these pieces of data as global, all you do is this: function do_foo() { global $form; // whatever else //return something; } Hope this helps. -jeremy brand Jeremy Brand :: Sr. Software Engineer :: 408-245-9058 :: jeremy@nirvani.net http://www.JeremyBrand.com/Jeremy/Brand/Jeremy_Brand.html for more Get your own Free, Private email at http://www.smackdown.com/ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - At least for the people who send me mail about a new language that they're designing, the general advice is: do it to learn about how to write a compiler. --Dennis Ritchie On Mon, 18 Dec 2000, Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: > Date: Mon, 18 Dec 2000 15:31:14 -0800 (PST) > From: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@php.net> > To: Bill.Hoffman@walgreens.com > Cc: php-general@lists.php.net > Subject: Re: [PHP] Global Annoyance > > Yes, this is a regular complaint, but let me give you the history on this > one. > > When I was writing the first version of PHP I had a real day job. In this > real day job I was one of a couple of developers on a very large project. > And we had a bug. Nobody could find this bug and the deadline was getting > closer. We single-stepped, we added break points, we debugged for days. > I finally got extremely stubborn and printed out everything. All 350,000 > lines of code on a dot-matrix printer and laid out the code in the > hallways where I worked. I fought with the cleaning crews as I crawled > along on my hands and knees with different coloured pens and traced > through everything. After 2 16 hour sessions I found the problem. It was > a function that changed a global by mistake as a side effect. > > At that point I swore that I would never have that problem again. I > mandated a rule that forced everyone to list the global variables they > used in comments at the top of every function. However, as I was also > writing PHP at the time, I had the chance to force this right at the > language level. If you forgot to declare your variable global then the > variable would simply be local to the function and the function probably > wouldn't work as expected, but at least it would not cause weird side > effects other distant parts of the code and thus a local/global mistake > would be much much easier to track down. > > So that is why this is so. I know it annoys some people, especially > people who use a lot of global variables, but that is actually a benefit. > It encourages people to use less global variables and it forces you to > think about each global variable you use. > > PHP is pretty free-form and there aren't too many places where the PHP > developers have enforced their own views on the PHP users, but this is one > place where you just have to trust me. In the long run you are better > off. > > -Rasmus > > On Mon, 18 Dec 2000 Bill.Hoffman@walgreens.com wrote: > > > I would first like to state that I have been using PHP for the last > > year and think that it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. There is > > one thing that has been annoying me that I have not found a way around and > > thought I would find out if there were others like me. I do not like > > having to declare a variable as global every time I use it in a function. > > 95% of the time the variables that I use I want to use throughout my whole > > script. I like to use functions but when I do I must declare all of the > > variables that I have already declared again in every function. Here is an > > example in case I am being unclear: > > > > function MailIt () { > > global $rec; > > global $subject; > > global $boxstatus; > > global $box; > > global $body; > > # call the mail function to mail admins > > mail > > ( > > "$rec", > > "$subject", > > "This E-mail has been sent due to $boxstatus on the currect box $box > > > > $body" > > ) > > } > > > > $rec = me@you.com; > > $subject = "test subject"; > > $boxstatus = "down"; > > $box = "prdbox"; > > $body = "This is where the body will go"; > > MailIt (); > > > > > > I would like to have all of my variables available globally unless I specify otherwise. > > If I wanted to make a second mail function I would have to > > declare all of these > > variables all over again. I have had to declare the same variable 5 times in 5 different > > functions. > > Let me know if anyone knows a better way to do this. > > > > > > Please respond to me via direct E-mail. The list stopped mailing to me months ago. > > > > > > Thanx, > > > > BEH > > > > > > > > -- > > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > > For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net > > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net > > > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, e-mail: php-general-unsubscribe@lists.php.net > For additional commands, e-mail: php-general-help@lists.php.net > To contact the list administrators, e-mail: php-list-admin@lists.php.net > >