Re: Resource constants

On 04.11.2008, at 23:02, Lukas Kahwe Smith wrote:

On 27.10.2008, at 08:26, Kalle Sommer Nielsen wrote:

2008/10/27 Lukas Kahwe Smith <mls@pooteeweet.org>:

On 27.10.2008, at 06:16, Kalle Sommer Nielsen wrote:

2008/10/26 Johannes Schlüter <johannes@php.net>:

On Sun, 2008-10-26 at 14:32 +0100, Kalle Sommer Nielsen wrote:

So, I propose its either being a "supported" feature, or simply put an deprecation notice on it (5.3) and remove it HEAD. I personally vote for the last option, as I don't think resources should be constants as they do not have the constant value even though they do on some level.

I recently discussed the same issue on IRC, (due to #45982) we can't get rid of resources in constants completely as we need that for STDIN, STDOU, STDERR constants.

Yes I know, but still I think we should either making it a supported feature or restrict registering resources on define().

Huh, I wasnt even aware that define() supports anything but scalar values. At any rate I am very sure I never stumbled over code defining a constant with a ressource. Not a very good idea to support ressources, especially given the obvious WTF's this causes (as you rightly pointed out). So I see that an E_DEPRECATED would make sense. However I am not sure about removing this though, which would make the E_DEPRECATED a bit odd (why deprecate if we do not remove?).

E_DEPRECATED if we deprecated this feature, but I would be happy with an E_STRICT if this behaviour will be kept. :)

so lets mark it as E_DEPRECATED in 5.3 and remove in 6.0, given that its currently not documented (though oddly it still discourages users to not do something that is not said to work "Only scalar data (boolean, integer, float and string) can be contained in constants. Do not define resource constants.")

ok i guess i was too quick with my call .. but i stirred up some discussion. as the following google code search shows the "feature" is used: http://www.google.com/codesearch?hl=en&lr=&q=lang%3Aphp+define.*(fopen|mysql_connect)\(&sbtn=Search main use seem to be: 1) emulating STDOUT and STDERR when using cgi 2) as a pseudo "super global" to pass around db and log file handles to me 1) seems like something we might want to provide in some other way, while 2) does not seem like something people really need constants for. so imho i still think we should deprecate it .. but other people have noted that they prefer an E_STRICT. so lets have a quick vote here: 1) leave as is 2) raise an E_DEPRECATED in PHP 5.3 and remove in PHP 6.0 3) raise an E_STRICT in PHP 5.3 Also should there be some other way to get STDOUT and STDERR defined even if we go for 2) or 3)? regards, Lukas Kahwe Smith mls@pooteeweet.org