Posted by gosha bine on 06/12/07 10:15

On 12.06.2007 10:49 Jerry Stuckle wrote:
> gosha bine wrote:
>> On 11.06.2007 20:58 Schraalhans Keukenmeester wrote:
>>>
>>> Imho implicit obj2str conversion is meaningless, and though I have
>>> abused
>>> the construct myself a few times I am glad they corrected this
>>> behaviour.
>>> Having to define your own stringifier forces you to think about and
>>> implement what is logically the proper meaning of a conversion to an
>>> otherwise incompatible type.
>>
>> That's exactly the point Zend developers are constantly missing. It is
>> not the responsibility of language designers to remove constructs that
>> may seem "useless" to them. An application programmer is the one who
>> decides which syntax is appropriate for her particular task. The job
>> of the language designer is to provide clean and consistent mechanism
>> for generating any possible expression, including "useless" ones. You
>> don't let a taxi driver decide where you're going to go, do you?
>>
>
> No, but you let a taxi driver decide how you get there.

You are not trying to refute a _metaphor_, are you? ;)

>
>> As to this specific case, removal of implicit toString is especially
>> stupid, because _every other_ type in php and _every other_ comparable
>> programming language supports it.
>>
>
> No, every other type in php doesn't support it. When was the last time
> you tried to convert an object to an int, for instance?

I meant, every other php type supports implicit toString:

echo 123; - works
echo array(1, 2, 3); - works
echo fopen('blah', 'r'); - works

echo new Blah(); - DOES NOT work

>
> And as for every other comparable programming language - no they don't.

Most languages support implicit toString for objects:

alert(new Blah()) - works in javascript
puts Blah.new - works in ruby
print Blah() - works in python
System.out.println(new Blah()) - works in java

echo new Blah() - DOES NOT work in php

Are you saying other languages' designers care less about their
programmers? Why do they allow such a "useless" thing?

> But who cares? Other languages have features PHP doesn't have, and PHP
> has features they don't have. It's comparing apples and oranges.

Comparing programming languages and technologies is always productive,
there's always something to learn from each other.

>
> Personally, I've found the silent conversion allows for sloppy
> programming and problems (like the one which started this thread). I'm
> glad to see the implicit conversion is gone.

What exactly are the problems which are solved by removing the silent
conversion?

>
> But if you really want it, the developers left a way for you to do so.
> Good for them.
>

An object without toString was converted to "object #x" or similar when
being printed. So was the behaviour prior to 5.2. Useless or not, it
simply worked. Now, it's broken and there's no way to make it work again.


--
gosha bine

extended php parser ~ http://code.google.com/p/pihipi
blok ~ http://www.tagarga.com/blok

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