Re: Namespaces and __autoload()

Why don't we add an optional second argument to __autoload() that receives the fully qualified namespace name of the class that should be autoloaded? That doesn't break BC and it prevents conflicts. David Am 27.08.2007 um 19:49 schrieb Stanislav Malyshev:

<?php namespace Foo; throw new Exception; In this case PHP first looks for Foo::Exception and only then for internal Exception, but the first lookup may call __autoload (or corresponding SPL functions) and it can emit error or throw exception. The patch provides an additional boolean argument to __autoload() that say if class is really required. In case if it false, user code shouldn't emit errors or throw exceptions.

There's two problems here: 1. On each access to internal class, like Exception, SPL classes, DateTime, reflection classes, etc. - we'd have call to autoload and subsequent disk access, maybe more than one if we have include path. Performance of it would be awful. 2. All libraries having autoloaders would have to rewrite them to support the new mode. I would propose different solution. When we have unresolved unqualified name, we do the following: 1. Check if we already know such class in namespace at compile-time. If so, it's resolved. 2. If not, will be resolved at run-time. 3. At run-time, check if we know such class in namespace now. If yes, it's resolved. 4. If not, check if we know internal class with such name. If yes, it's resolved to internal class. 5. If not, try to autoload this class. If autoloading fails, it's the undefined class error. This rule is a bit more complex, but allows to resolve common cases without extra filesystem accesses and allows to keep autoloader without modification. Comments? --Stanislav Malyshev, Zend Software Architect stas@zend.com http://www.zend.com/ (408)253-8829 MSN: stas@zend.com --PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php