Comments on: PHP’s function naming and argument order

By: Time to clean up the PHP source code in version 6 | Blog.feryn.eu

Time to clean up the PHP source code in version 6 | Blog.feryn.eu — Sun, 31 May 2009 18:02:20 +0000

[...] read Chris’ blog post and spread the word. Off course it’s the PHP developers who should share their opinion and if [...]

By: Chris R.

Chris R. — Sun, 31 May 2009 12:46:23 +0000

@Rick – indeed fixing the functions themself might be a bad idea but the problems should be fixed, and I feel like now is the time. Wether a new set of functions get introduced or the old get altered to reflect the ‘right’ argument order is something that needs to be discussed further since both have consequences.

But i wouldn’t mind PHP switching to some kind of documenting technique like for example ExtJS does where specific new documentation gets generated with each minor version release like 1.1, 2.0, 2.1 and 2.2 had. I can’t count the times that I’ve run into problems only to consult the docs and noticing that somewhere down the page it states that argument X only got added in PHP 5.2 and i’m using 5.1.

I for example always know with what version of PHP i’m working so if i’m developing a project for 5.2 i’d consult the 5.2 docs, if i’m developing a project for 6 i’d consult the 6 docs and know exactly what order the arguments would be in or what functions are depricated and what other functions to use.

That being said i’d like to say that indeed for projects like let’s say PhpMyAdmin backwards compatibility could be a major problem but hey … how many project nowadays only work with PHP5? I don’t see any problem releasing projects in the future that require PHP6 and the new, better function naming and argument order.

It’s a tricky subject but with what I know now I’d prefer just fixing the existing functions in 6 and support the 5 branch a little longer.

By: Rick

Rick — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:13:01 +0000

I think you’re slightly misrepresenting Scott & Derick’s argument as far as argument order is concerned. They quite convincingly argued that it would break PHP5 code almost beyond repair, since in most cases there’s no way of telling if the arguments have already been switched.

If you see strstr($foo, $bar), there’s no way to know if this was pre-PHP6 code that needs to be ported, or code written for or ported to PHP6. Unfortunately, not all variables in the real world are called $needle and $haystack… This will not just “upset” developers, it would become a large scale nightmare.

Personally, they’ve convinced me why this at least is a very, very bad idea. I still believe we should get rid of these awful inconsistencies, and an alternative would be to deprecate the existing functions and introducing new ones. Even if “deprecated” means the old functions will be with us until PHP8, at least we could choose to ignore them.