Re: [RFC] Alternative typehinting syntax for accessors

On 1/5/13 7:25 PM, Anthony Ferrara wrote:

No, the other initializer that would be useful is new Foo. Assigning a default value is not an initializer. An initializer is something that's run on object construction (and has been discussed in other threads): class Foo {

     public DateTime $bar {
         init: { $bar = new DateTime(); }
     }

}

I think property init() would enable two bad practices: 1. putting too much logic in a property (SRP) 2. building dependencies within the object instead of injecting them (the better way is what we already do: receive dependencies in the constructor and assign them to the properties)

null pointers. And if you set the property in the constructor (and it's typed), you should never have the chance for it to be non-null, unless you explicitly define it that way. Otherwise, you'd have to litter your code with is_null checks... Which defeats the point of the syntax in the first

Which is why I think the default setting signature should not have "= null". If someone wants to allow setting the property *back* to null, they could easily: public Foo $foo { get; set($value = null); } I agree with you that, in an ideal world, a property with a declared type would *never not have* that type, but I think a property init() would be a bad tradeoff to make that a reality. The class constructor is the best place to do this, and maybe this is why C# forces property storage to be in fields; you can set fields directly from the constructor without going through property setters. Steve Clay -- http://www.mrclay.org/