RE: [PHP-DEV] PHP Specification

> On 25/03/2014, at 7:31 PM, Ivan Enderlin @ Hoa <ivan.enderlin@hoa-project.net> wrote: > >> I am not sure to understand your proposal well, but instead of producing >> a full complete specification at first, we should focus on important >> features than other implementations do not support. Typically, the fact >> the php binary reads from its stdin is missing most of the >> time. >> >> I imagine to start the specification at different levels: >> >> * the syntax, which is not easy since PHP grammars is ambigious >> but it's feasible in a reasonable time, >> * the semantics, very very important, it will describe how data are >> represented, objects etc., how they behaves, it will clarify a lot of things >> * the tool, i.e. the PHP architecture through SAPI, one of the most clever feature of PHP, >> * the extension, how are they split in different directories, how >> to load them etc. (still from the user point of view) >> * then the standard library, which includes ext/core, ext/standard, ext/stream etc. >> >> The goal is not, at first, to specify the behavior of all functions. >> This would be totally crazy. PHP has a big tests suite to check >> that. Before, the most important thing (for me) is to specify the >> langage (syntax, semantics and tool). This is a good start and a nice >> task since types, auto-boxing, generators etc., will be described in those parts. >> > I don't think the SAPI and extension parts should be part of a language > specification. To me, those are implementation concerns. > > Language should be concerned with syntax, semantics and standard libraries. > > Cheers, > David Maybe it's a stupid question, but putting the current documentation into a proper format wouldn't it be a specification of the PHP language? Maybe not a complete specification and with some overhead, but it would provide all information for third party implementations, or not? Best regards Christian