RE: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Propety Accessors v1.1

> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 5:51 AM, Clint Priest <cpriest@zerocue.com> wrote: > > I'm not even sure that automatic backing fields are even desired, I > > never felt the need to have them in C# and the only reason they were > > included is because they were a part of Dennis's original proposal. > > Eliminating them would eliminate this as an issue. > > I just did a bit of research regarding this topic and I have found the following reasons why > automatic properties exist in C#: > 1. Changing a field to a property breaks the binary interface, so all code using the library > has to be recompiled. If you are using an > automatic property you can safely add additional behavior for it later. > 2. Properties support data binding, whereas fields do not. > 3. There are attributes that work for properties, but don't work for fields. > 4. Reflection for fields and properties works differently, so changing a field to a property is > a BC break. > > I guess that #1 is the most important one (you don't want to break the > interface) and it obviously does not apply to PHP. Points #2 and #3 also don't apply as > PHP has neither data binding not attributes. #4 > also doesn't seem to apply because ReflectionPropertyAccessor defines all the methods that > ReflectionProperty defines, so > changing > field->property should be okay there too. > > From that I would conclude that the automatic properties are really not needed in PHP. I think > they will only cause confusion as to > when one should use public $name; and when one should use > public $name { get; set; };. > > The only thing I'm not sure about is how read-only / write-only properties rely on > automatic properties with your current > implementation. If the automatic properties aren't needed there either, then I think they > can be safely removed. Nice, I would agree that we should eliminate the automatic get/set since the reason they exist in C# is not an issue in PHP and it has only served to confuse everyone. With the read-only and write-only, they are separate from automatic getters/setters really. If you define a read-only with {get;} it's the same as any other getter.