Re: Suggestion Method Constant

On 12/10/2017 22:32, Sara Golemon wrote:

answer, but (Foo::class.'::bar') may be what some would expect. Ideally we'd have first-class references to functions. -Sara

To chime in.. To my mind, references to functions is the holy grail so far as beginning to clean up the entire ecosystem around function calls. IMHO directly referencing MyClass::StaticFunction eventually needs to return a "Function" class that is directly invokable. I see 3 contexts that the parser would need to handle: 1. Standard Calling MyClass::StaticFunction(1, 2, 3); my_function(1, 2, 3) $inst->my_function(1234); Obviously returning a full function object to useland for every call would be considered wasteful, so the parser would need to call these as before. 2. Returning a native "Function" class, an __invokeable hybrid of Callable and Reflection; $method = MyClass::StaticFunction; $method(1, 2, 3); $method = $inst->my_function; /* bind to $inst */ $method(1, 2, 3); $method->getName(); $method->getArgumentCount(); $method->getBinding(); 3. Returning closures when the argument list includes one or more late-bound values, so we can finally put the pipe operator to bed at the same time as getting a bunch of other power from it. $method = MyClass::StaticFunction($1, 'Arg 1', 'Arg 3); $method('Arg 1'); $method = $inst->my_function('Arg 1', 'Arg 2', $1); $method('Arg 3'); chain( 'Random String', func_1($1, 'Hello', 'World'), func_2($1, 'Peace', 'Out'), func_3('ThisOneNeeds', 'Arg3ReplacingInstead', $1), func_3($1, $1, 'HowAboutOneWhichUsesTheSameArgumentTwice') ); function chain($start, ... $fns) { foreach ($fns as $fncall) {

     $start = $fncall($start);

} return $start; } -- Mark Randall