Re: Internal iteration API

On 07/24/2012 03:52 AM, jpauli wrote:

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 2:35 AM, Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com> wrote:

Hi!

So, I've not been inside the engine so in practice this may make no sense at all, but what about looking at it the other way around? Vis, instead of making objects more and more like arrays, make arrays an object that happens to implement ArrayAccess, Iterator, and whatever

That'd be very nice idea if we were implementing new PHP. I think the fact that arrays are not objects in PHP is a source of many problems. However, right now it probably won't be possible to do it without breaking BC in many places dealing with array copy/assignment/passing semantics.

I'd then say : let's keep that idea somewhere to implement it in a new major PHP version. Anyway, there will come a time where we will be developing for PHP6 (or PHP next Major if you prefer), and I think we should use this gap to break BC and add new cool ideas like this one, we seem all to agree with. Julien.P

Agreed. We survived Objects becoming, er, Objects in PHP 5.0. Arrays changing would be a major version change, but if the benefits are enough, we could survive that, too. --Larry Garfield