Re: [RFC] Property Accessors v1.2 : Internal Accessor Method Visibility / Callability

On 10/26/2012 6:37 PM, Stas Malyshev wrote:

Hi!

Stas, if you define an accessor, how do you define it? Do you say

Either way, doesn't matter.

According to the current proposal at least you can write the first code *and the first code only*. If you write the second code then you

That's where I think it is wrong. It would be much simpler and consistent with existing PHP if it were a natural extension of __get instead of a completely new and foreign concept.

special behavior for properties. You probably won't start off with telling them that this declaration is automatically converted to a set of __getFoo methods which are registered as handlers for the accessor. I really don't see how going into details like __getFoo makes anything easier.

Depending on your purpose and background. If you know how __get works, extrapolating to __getFoo is trivial. Getting special syntax that produces __getFoo from this is also trivial. Getting the concept of methods that are not quite methods and get called only through special intercept mechanism and have special backtrace rewriting engine and reflection hiding patches so you can be inside the method that officially does not exist - not so trivial. The only thing that does back patching is for static accessors and you've already pointed out that what I was doing to make that happen is just going to break and fail in so many ways.

What is "reflection hiding patches" referring to? Reflection is changed to reflect what the user has defined, that's what reflection is supposed to be.. no? Lastly, this idea that accessors is such a foreign concept is a bit ridiculous. You'd be hard pressed to find a modern/popular language these days that doesn't have them, so if someone is confused about what an accessor is then they probably have their head in the sand, god forbid they'd have to read the manual. -- -Clint