Hey NikiC,
On Tue, May 4, 2021, 12:34 Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi internals,>> I'd like to present an RFC for property accessors:> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/property_accessors>> Property accessors are like __get() and __set(), but for a single property.> They also support read-only properties and properties with asymmetric> visibility (public read, private write) as a side-effect.>> The proposal is modeled after C#-style accessors (also used by Swift), and> syntactically similar to the previous> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/propertygetsetsyntax-v1.2
> proposal.>> While I put a lot of effort into both the proposal and the implementation,> I've grown increasingly uncertain that this is the right direction for us> to take. The proposal turned out to be significantly more complex than I> originally anticipated (despite reducing the scope to only "get" and "set"> accessors), and I'm sure there are some interactions I still haven't> accounted for. I'm not convinced the value justifies the complexity.>> So, while I'm putting this up for discussion, it may be that I will not> pursue landing it. I think a lot of the practical value of this accessors> proposal would be captured by support for read-only (and/or private-write)> properties. This has been discussed (and declined) in the past, but> probably should be revisited.>
I've skimmed the RFC: it will take a lot of testing to see how much this
impacts BC, but potentially a lot.
A few things that came up so far:
* instead of allowing by-ref get declaration, can we just kill it here,
before it breeds again? I don't think I need to explain the woes of by-ref
to internals, but removing the ability to declare new accessors by-ref
would be a huge win for the engine and the language long-term.
* what does an array cast of an object with accessors look like? I assume
only properties backed by storage will appear? (Yes, the array cast is
still the simplest/most useful pure API to inspect object state 😁)
* what is the design decisions around same-visibility declarations causing
compile errors in inheritance scenarios? Those would make BC unnecessarily
complex, if a parent type declares a new accessor with the same name:
variance is understandable, but same visibility errors seem a bit too much
As for the rest: it needs more careful review.
So far, good work!
>