note 53719 added to migration5.oop

I have noted some discussion going on about the 'Cannot re-assign $this' error. The most simple way to reproduce the error is: class MyObject { function test() { $this = new MyObject; } } I found the following quote (quoting zend.com) on php-dev: http://www.zend.com/php/ask_experts.php : "The fact that you could change in PHP 4, was never really meant to be although it worked. In PHP 5 we removed this option due to performance and semantic reasons. In PHP 5, you can either use a factory method pattern or throw an exception on error in the constructor." This statement implies that the error lies not in PHP5 but in the script. A Bogus Bug in http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=27659 tells me the same thing. There has been some discussion on how to migrate such code to php5 without having to reengineer the whole App. From my point of view the following solutions are viable: 1. Use delegation & Object composition: $this->Object = new Whatever(); function nameOfFunction() { return $this->Object->nameOfFunction(); } This requires lots of code rewriting. Some of it could be realised with overloading. Variables would need to get overloaded or could only be accessed using a getter/setter. As a xtra you get clean OO Code! 2. Replace Original Objects Content: foreach (get_object_vars($foo) as $key => $value) $this->$key = $value; This solution only works with instance-variables. Additional classkit/runkit code would be needed to get everything else correct. This way less refactoring would be needed. This could be the right way to go if you don't need to replace any methods or the classname. I haven't decided wich way to go. I wrote this so the next hacker with this problem finds some info where I was looking for it. ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/migration5.oop.php Edit -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=edit+53719 Delete: added to the manual -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53719&report=yes&reason=added+to+the+manual Delete: bad code -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53719&report=yes&reason=bad+code Delete: spam -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53719&report=yes&reason=spam Delete: useless -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53719&report=yes&reason=useless Delete: other reasons -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=delete+53719&report=yes Reject -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php?action=reject+53719&report=yes Search -- http://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php