Re: Re: RC1, instanceof?

At 09:55 PM 8/9/2005 +0200, Pierre-Alain Joye wrote:

On Tue, 09 Aug 2005 12:44:59 -0700 Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com> wrote: But that's a good point. For the few frameworks that might require such functionality they can use class_exists() or other methods. That doesn't mean we should change instanceof for mainstream usage which is 99.99%. Where do you get this percentage? Do a fgrep -rn is_a\( in PEAR for example. And please no stupid comments (not you Andi the evil other ;)). There is plenty of good reasons to do this check.

You are missing my point. I didn't say people don't use is_a(). There is a lot of PHP 4 compatible code which you'll find is_a() in. I said the amount of instances where you actually require the proposed behavior is neglgible. It happens with plug-in architectures which generally speaking, tend to also use Reflection functions (incl. class_exists, function_eixsts, etc.).

In all languages, frameworks do some trickier stuff. In Java they often mess with the ClassLoader, in C++ they deal with DSOs. These are _compiled_, _linked_ languages. The simple fact that you cannot compile your sources explain the tricks. PHP is (should I say was?) mostly a dynamic and scripting language.

Being a dynamically typed language doesn't mean everything should be dynamic. Does it mean we have to allow adding PPP properties/methods on the fly, allow for dynamic type hints ($ClassName $obj), and so on? I'm not expecting you to answer these questions but being dynamically typed doesn't mean the whole language is dynamic. That doesn't mean you can't/shouldn't argue your point, but I think this is a bad reason.

This kind of development paradigm is not mainstream and as long as there's a way to achieve it, then that's what's important. What is important to me is that "you" deprecate things without acceptable alternatives.

Did I deprecate it? And yes, as I mentioned there is an acceptable alternative, although it seems it's not acceptable to you. I can't argue that point as it's how you feel.

Even the people that mentioned it's soooo important. I bet that if I look at their code, there's maybe 1 instance that actually would need this (if at all). Wrong....

We must be looking at completely different applications. Andi