Re: Autoloading functions/consts without a performance impact

On Fri, 3 Jan 2020 at 11:37, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> wrote: > Overall though, I do tend to agree that the use of static methods is at > this point more idiomatic than the use of free-standing functions, and it > might make more sense to go in that direction. > Perhaps a way forward would be to effectively abandon namespaced functions as a language feature: * Implement https://wiki.php.net/rfc/use_global_elements * Plan to eventually make "use global functions" the default * Revive the "static class" modifier, which was rejected under https://wiki.php.net/rfc/abstract_final_class primarily on the grounds that "namespaced functions should be used instead" * Add a "use function A::foo" syntax that requires the target function to actually be static Namespaces containing only functions and constants could then be replaced by autoloadable classes. However, if we're looking at radical changes of direction, I wonder if we should instead plan to phase out autoloading itself. With OpCache and now pre-loading, the idea of "only include the files you need" makes much less sense than it did ten years ago. OpCache on the command-line is probably used much more rarely, but given how easy it is to incidentally pull in dozens of classes from a third-party library, maybe that's something that should change? Regards, -- Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]