Clarifying the resolution rules

Hi, Now that we have a separator, it's time to clarify what happened to the resolution order for functions and classes, which if I read Greg's messages, is still not clearly defined. 1) I think we've established that autoloading + fallback for classes is unworkable, as it either causes excessive autoload triggering, or alternatively allows internal classes to override unloaded but to-be-autoloaded namespaced classes. Then why is it still under consideration? 2) Making the backslash optional for internal functions means popular drop-in replacements for internal functions and extensions in global space, which work today, will break in a namespace, examples: libcurlemu. Also check any comments on PECL functions on php.net, and you'll see a myriad of drop-in replacements people use today. Also, for those who want to automatically convert their internal functions to backslash prefix for use in namespaces, you can use this quick snippet I wrote (works in 5.2.x too): http://pastebin.com/f13125acd I don't make guarantees it's perfect, but it can be improved and given to people as a porting aid. Opinions about how disruptive a mandatory backslash for global symbols *in namespaces* would be, are welcome. Keep in mind that making the backslash optional will lead to code breakage (such as for above drop-in replacements, class autoloading etc.) and slower performance (runtime resolution of function calls). Think of it as file paths. When you're inside a directory you need to prefix your path with "/" (eg "\") to refer to the root, but you don't need to do that when you're in the root directory. Regards, Stan Vassilev