Re: Making stdClass iterable

On Mon, 14 Jan 2019 at 15:00, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> wrote: > The way I see it, stdClass is basically an array in object notation (and > object passing semantics). It carries data in the form of key value pairs > and has no associated logic. The only things you can do with it are access > keys (properties) and ... iterate over them. > > [...] But now that we do have it, and with the way it is typically being > used, I think it's fully appropriate to iterate over it. > I think it's the assumption about "the way it is typically being used" where I differ from you. I generally see stdClass being used where people want to access specific keys using -> notation, and maybe to get the pass-by-pointer semantics. I'm not convinced that iterating over it as an ordered collection is a sufficiently universal use case that it should be an exception to the proposed rule of "objects aren't iterable unless iteration logic has been defined". I can see it might be convenient occasionally, but it feels like an unnecessary special case, on top of a feature which I agree should be discouraged anyway. Regards, -- Rowan Collins [IMSoP]