RE: [PHP-DEV] [patch] Late static bindings (LSB)

>It's becoming messy now - we now need to start to invent all kinds of >complex propagation rules for it in parallel with the true object >propagation rules. Why not just have an object then? Because if you could only see the incredible number of "get_class($this)" and of "if(__CLASS__!=get_class($this)) do this or that" and of "$t = get_parent_class($class); return ($t!=__CLASS__ ? $t : $class)'" and other special unreadable hacks I have to imagine in order to get what I want. Like that one, ridiculous: static private function getStruct(&$class) { if(!(is_array(Entity::$struct) && array_key_exists($class, Entity::$struct))) { eval("if(!isset(".$class."::\$structure)) self::array2xml('".$class."');"); eval("Entity::\$struct[\$class] = new SimpleXMLElement( ".$class."::\$structure);"); } return Entity::$struct[$class]; } Do you understand what it does? Do you find it readable? Clean? I don't. Yet that's what I have to write in PHP. And when you have 20 methods in a class, 3 or 4 levels of inheritance, and you constantly have to manipulate get_parent_class($this) and other get_class($this) and other eval($class::..), it becomes impossible. There must be a cleaner way to express what you want to write. Maybe the problem arises in PHP because, as far as I know, there is no way to define a function as virtual, like in C++, and so you can't choose between static lookup or dynamic lookup.