Re: Is there a technical reason <?= considered a "short tag"?

Roman I wrote: > Philip Olson wrote: >> On May 30, 2009, at 12:49 PM, Roman I wrote: >> >>> Philip Olson wrote: >>>> On May 18, 2009, at 5:33 PM, Roman I wrote: >>> This neither answers nor invalidates the original question, though. >> Unfortunately I do not remember everything about this but do know that: >> >> - Decoupling <?= from short_open_tag was discussed, and did not >> happen >> - Allowing it to be enabled at runtime was discussed, and did not >> happen >> - The issues with <?= and <? are similar... an invalid PI >> >> I've not read every thread or discussion on this (there are many) but >> CVS speaks for itself. Here's one thought comparing the two viewpoints: >> >> - >> http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=120614525214419&w=2 >> >> The following RFC mentions this decoupling, yet was declined: >> >> - http://wiki.php.net/rfc/shortags >> >> And lastly, the general topic of short tags came up recently while >> several people discussed PHP 6: >> >> - http://wiki.php.net/summits/pdmnotesmay09 >> >> In summary: It's a topic people don't want to talk about. :) >> >> Regards, >> Philip > > Thanks for the references. I've seen the RFC, but I haven't seen that thread > you've linked to. It does contain almost all things I could say here. > However, I haven't found very strong argument against decoupling in that > thread either. :) > > Even without short tags, PHP will not be a well-formed XML processing > instruction in many cases. For example, > <?php $x = '<?>'; ?> > or, more commonly: > <root test="<?php echo $value; ?>" /> > > Plain <? has an additional problem of affecting the ability to include XML > files from PHP source code. However, it seems to me that using the syntax > above will have exactly the same consequences for XML well-formedness as > using <?=. Since the syntax above is allowed with short_open_tags off, > disallowing <?= with that setting off looks like an overkill. That's my > reasoning behind starting this thread, anyway. > > Admittedly, I haven't said anything new here, but I've rephrased an old > argument in a nicer way. :)Maybe it will do some good. Right, I think that is actually the conclusion we came to at one point. I don't remember the discussion that caused the RFC to be declined. I would be in favour of reversing that decision wherever it came from. Nobody is going to pass a PHP script through an XML parser, and PHP itself will never be well-formed, so that is a lost cause. We'd have to start tossing CDATA blocks and write code like: if( 2 &lt; 3 ) echo "2 is less than 3"; And that just isn't going to happen. The only valid argument against short_tags itself is that it clashes with named PI tags and <?= does not have that same problem. -Rasmus