Re: Resurrecting the Function Renaming Thread

> Actually, from my POV a language that has bin2hex, dechex and > strtolower has been screwed up somewhat already. Whether this > is one to one to C or not is not an issue for me, and for quite > an amount of people who _don't_ have the C background. Lots of > win32 PHP people have VBS background, not C, which is more > common among the Unix nation. But where does it stop? Should we get rid of those curly braces and go back to :endif or whatever it was so it will be more like VBS? One of the nice things about PHP3->PHP4 migration was the backwards-compatibility: But it was *not* easy. Changing all these functions is a *huge* task, and maintaining both old and new names indefinitely is monumental. Yes, it would have been "nicer" for newbies if the original authors had decided to regularlize those function names rather than maintain their roots to C or Perl or the OS or where-ever they came from. And, yes, some critics will always have ammunition from the odd names to claim that PHP isn't a "real" language -- These are critics who will simply pick some other fault if we change it anyway. Getting philosophical here for a moment -- I *like* that the function names have a history behind them. There was a time in US history when immigrant children were not taught their parents' and grandparents' language. Virtually all have regretted that practice. I think we do a disservice to try and force PHP into a new mold. Let the newbies ask "Why?" and learn their history. So, let's keep the core functions funky -- Just think of it as a piece of history lovingly preserved, no matter how illogical. :-)