RE: [PHP-DEV] Improved zend_string API

Hi Bob, > -----Original Message----- > From: Bob Weinand [mailto:bobwei9@hotmail.com] > Sent: Monday, June 29, 2015 6:44 PM > To: Dmitry Stogov > Cc: francois; Anatol Belski; Anatol Belski; PHP Internals > Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Improved zend_string API > > Hey, looks like I'm a bit late to the party, but I'd like to object against the > accessor macros on zend_string. > > What does it help to replace very nice ->val, ->len etc. with macros? > > ZSTR_VAL(str)[ZSTR_LEN(str)] = 0; or str->val[str->len] = 0; > zend_string_set_len(str, ZSTR_LEN(str) - 2); or str->len -= 2; Also, that particular > function suggests to me that the string is expanded if lengths don't match. > > I much prefer direct accessors which indicate a) no side-effects happening here, > b) less functions to remember (you just look at the struct and know everything > about it) and c) end up being more readable. > > Yes, I'm totally aware that when we ever want to change the API (I don't see > coming it in near future anyway), it could help having wrappers. But wrappers > don't help against every API change… let's say for some reason we'd want to go > back to the old char*/int; would wrappers help? no. (Yes, that's maybe a bad > example, but just trying to show that, while it has maybe a theoretical gain, I > don't see a real practical benefit.) zend_string is really a core structure and > extremely simple. Please don't trade simplicity for a small other benefit. > > Also, we still leave zend_string struct exposed (presumably for allowing inlining). > At the point where we are now, many extension authors probably already are > also accessing zend_string directly. We're going to have a colorful mix of code > using the APIs and not using it, which is the worst we can get now. > > To end up, I very much like unifying prefixes (ZSTR_*), but I strongly dislike > hurting readability and consistency so much for such little benefit. > I can only express my background on accepting this patch. In first place, the names ZSTR_* are really speaking, like (z)end_(str)ing and the rest mirros the name of the actual member. That is better than STR_*. Or like IS_INTERNED vs ZSTR_IS_INTERNED, talking about what happens. With the set len function - yep, probably a bit misleading. Thinking also about the new foreach macros for hash or even zend_hash_num_elements symbol which has survived from PHP5 among others. Same here, access to one member encapsulated. Though direct accesses ->nNumOfElements is still here and there, where it's useful or no care taken. Just to name one analogue. A macro doesn't cost anything, while it does its job abstracting things. The PR is closed. It's not about forcing anyone to not to use ->val and alike (maybe indeed it is), but about what one calls application programming interface. aka API. ->val is not an API. For the outer codes it's probably the own responsibility on using the APIs vs direct access. Regards Anatol