Re: Re: RC1, instanceof?

You are wrong because __autoload() *is* called and you can load the class on the-fly. The only problem is if the class does not exist in your code base, in which case, your application should blow up! Andi At 07:44 AM 8/9/2005 +0200, Pierre-Alain Joye wrote:

On Mon, 08 Aug 2005 14:43:25 -0700 andi@zend.com (Andi Gutmans) wrote: I don't agree that instanceof on a class which doesn't exist should work. It doesn't do so in other languages (or at least not in Java/C++(dynamic_cast)) nor does it really seem to make a lot of sense and be useful. Sounds more like an edge case you have hit with some weird code which can probably be written differently. You cannot compare PHP with Java and C++ in this case, sorry. They work differently for known reason (compiled being one). If you have a method, which could be a factory, or the behaviors depends on which object it gets, you have now 2 choices: - Accept to live with a possible fatal error - Include all single classes you are going to check, even if you will use none of them. The 3rd possibility, fix instanceof. Today, fetching of classes in the language is very generic, and they have to exist. I see very few cases where this would not be true if you are writing a regular application. In those few cases where you are doing something extremely weird, you can use reflection to introspect an object. Agreed, that's fetch_class is not opportun for instanceof. My point is not about the fetch_class is done but the way instanceof works. Reflection is terribly overkilled for such a need, and slow. There is no way this would be changed for RC1 (or PHP 5.1) because it's a significant change which would affect many places and not only instanceof. I personally think it shouldn't be changed at all. If you're referencing classes/exceptions in your code that don't exist, then something is very bogus with your code. Don't use a NonExistantException if that could happen, use Exception... Agreed here too, not related to instanceof though. --Pierre -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php