Re: 5.4's New De-referencing plus assignment

To me the main problem here is that $bar = ($foo = new Foo)->bar() simply doesn't make much sense. It is equivalent to: $foo = new Foo; $bar = $foo->bar(); Which is much cleaner and easier to understand. The plain (new Foo)->bar() syntax *is* useful for cases like (new ReflectionClass($class))->implementsInterface('Foo'), where you need only one single bit of information from a class. Nikita On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 8:02 PM, Ralph Schindler <ralph@ralphschindler.com> wrote: > Nikita, > > You're completely right about the expanded expressions, but I'm not sure its > an edge-case per-se. > > The problem with the current syntax is that the resultant of the 'new' > operation is lost UNLESS your chained method returns $this - which IMO makes > it about as 1/2 as useful as it really could be. > > In the case of "new" though, the resultant is always an object, it seems > like it should be permissible to change the parser to allow for variable > assignment of the target object. > > I think for people just trying out this new behavior (by seeing it in the > release notes as (new Foo)->bar()), the next logical thing is to try this > syntax: > >  ($foo = new Foo)->bar() > >  // OR in bison >  '(' variable '=' new_expr ')' > > I did it, and I see other people doing it too. So I guess the question is.... > "how edge case is this edge case?" :)