Re: PHP_Func

Aidan Lister wrote:

I was thinking to myself, why doesn't PEAR have a set of functions that everyone, for every project ends up rewriting? Surely that's what we're about here, reusability. include 'function.microtime_str.php'; // tell me you haven't recreated this function at least 100 times http://ircphp.com/users/imho/?file=function.microtime_str.php

the logic being that somethings will never make it into PHP itself since they can be done sufficiently fast in PHP or are considered to be bloat.

Then I was thinking, well, why stop there - why not introduce implementations of functions that are lacking in older versions of php - god knows the PHP Manual is full of them. For example, http://ircphp.com/users/imho/?file=function.scandir.php http://ircphp.com/users/imho/?file=function.file_get_contents.php http://ircphp.com/users/imho/?file=function.file_put_contents.php Then lsmith said "why not put them in a class", and immediately my brain started ticking.

Err no .. you misunderstood me there. For the BC functions they obviously shouldnt be in a class. If we add our own stuff they need to be in a class however to prevent namespace issues .. or we could add our own "pearfoobar_" function prefix.

PHP_Func, a class for extending and replacing basic PHP functionality. All functions would be abstract, and called as such. eg. PHP_Func::file_get_contents();

so this wouldnt make sense .. it would just add bloat. you want to be able to call file_get_contents() normally. its just that at the beginning of your code you say "please include all needed code to make this as close as possible to php version x.y.z if needed"

Anyway, that's my idea... I'd love any feedback, whether people think it's a good idea, etc.

beyond that I think there are several functions I have tried to get into internals@ which I need over and over again in my PEAR modules: like being able to merge multi dimensional arrays, figure out if a file is includeable or not. actually all of these are bad examples as they would be better implemented in C. however some things can be done sufficiently fast in php itself but are still often required. actually it seems that serialize() can be done quicker in PHP then the current implementation provided in C :-) (http://www.zend.com/zend/week/week179.php) regards, Lukas Smith smith@backendmedia.com _______________________________ BackendMedia www.backendmedia.com berlin@backendmedia.com Linn Zwoch Smith GbR Pariser Str. 44 D-10707 Berlin Tel +49 30 83 22 50 00 Fax +49 30 83 22 50 07