Class Destruction / Reloading

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hello Internals, Has anyone given thought to a feature that allows (PHP) developer to invalidate classes (allowing the developer to re-load the class, with modified code)? I realize that this is not possible now, and for good reason. But I think the idea has potential. I asked Sara about this, yesterday, after the idea occurred to me, and she graciously whipped up a small extension that does exactly what I'm looking for, but she told me she thought it was a bad idea to be doing this (and also allows destruction of functions). I agree: without the proper safety nets, this is a dangerous thing to be doing. So, why do I want this functionality, in the first place? Consider a long-running application (not a web page, but, for instance, a sockets-based application). It would be very useful for me, as a developer, to be able to re-load parts of the application, without tossing the whole current instance of PHP (and all associated resources) - -- ie, doesn't release socket connections, but allows re-loading of the associated handlers. This could be accomplished by invalidating a class (destroying it, and marking all instanciated objects with a special type (__PHP_Destroyed_Class comes to mind, after __PHP_Incomplete_Class), and re-declaring the class. - -- sample code (working) -- <?php eval('Class Foo { function name() { echo "Foo\n"; } }'); Foo::name(); shiva_destroy_class('Foo'); eval('Class Foo { function name() { echo "Bar\n"; } }'); Foo::name(); ?> - -- output -- Foo Bar I also spoke (typed) with Stig, who told me that this sounds more like a PHP 6 feature. I understand that class destruction breaks a lot of assumptions. As Sara pointed out, it will definitely break optimizers. Also, the potential for segfault is very high: Class Foo { function name() { echo "Foo\n"; } }; $Foo = new Foo(); shiva_destroy_class('Foo'); eval('Class Foo { function name() { echo "Bar\n"; } };'); $Foo->name(); results in segfault.. I'm, admittedly, completely out of my league here.. I played with the API a little, and was reminded of this. (-: It may seem like a stupid idea at first, but I think there's some value in re-loading pieces of code, and with the proper object counting/invalidation, sounds like it could be safe, but like I said, I don't know what I'm doing. Is this worth further discussion? S -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFBI9G1WppknrQMxQIRAjPOAJ9gsQ6AZlwd5QI6+CYerGOgtsKwhQCfejxZ zfMP6MgKuGvHx7dO4mPNh90= =GR/W -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----