Re: Re: internals Digest 13 Apr 2012 01:23:19 -0000 Issue 2650

Kris Craig wrote:

I object significantly to a few points here. One is the concept of a

magic file extension. Why should a file behave differently just because of a different extension? In general, extensions are human readable clues to what's in the file. Yes, they are usually used for mime type hints, but relying upon them feels dirty. And especially baking in the reliance into the language really makes me feel dirty... I'm not saying not to do it, but it's not exactly the cleanest solution. Anthony, *please read the thread before responding to it!! *I JUST addressed this a couple emails ago! There is no "magic" file extension. It's only a convention. Nothing more, nothing less. It is no different than how .php and .phps are handled. The convention dictates those extensions, but they're identified by the actual handler, as this would be. Understand?

The problem with 'conventions' is that people use them ... just as now many frameworks and libraries drop the ?> ... That is not forced on us, and I'll be honest - I put them back! - I am free to do that. But if libraries start moving to YOUR preferred method of working, then where do *I* stand. I'm not allowed to put the ?> back, and I can't easily identify php files because the <? is missing - yes I deliberately missed off the php simply because the application that pays MY bills still uses short tags! Even that simple change would be a considerable amount of work just because every site has it's own much modified set of files ... all php with embedded html ... which have evolved locally over 10 years. THAT is the real strength of php ... I don't have to compile anything and changes to one 'function' on the browser don't affect other pages. I now have all of the 'variant's' archived on an hg DVCS but building a 'pure' copy of every one and testing it would take weeks. This is why back tracking to PHP5.2.x is SO attractive ... even if I have to maintain my own 'security' updates. All these 'little' changes build into a situation where even PHP5.2 code simply does not run easily ... A separate 'thorn' is that while *I* feel I spend a lot of my time contributing to PHP via other open source projects that we use with php, I don't contribute in a way that actually allows me a vote on this, and I'm sure there are others who are in the same boat :( ( AND lets trim some of the reams of quoting - I gave up reading the over night posts after 20 minutes! I don't have the time ... ) -- Lester Caine - G8HFL ----------------------------- Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/ Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk// Firebird - http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php