Matthias Pigulla wrote:
> As to the possible impact - I did a quick scan of Smarty and
> phpDocumentor (because I used to have CVS HEAD checkouts of them at
> hand) and found that both of them would be affected. Please, do not make
> such a change that late in an RC5 and push it out with PHP5.1. At least
> give the maintainers of popular PHP based projects some time to pick it
> up and test it.
This is a non-issue for phpDocumentor. All we need is at least 6 months
to a year of lead time on the final decision in order to adjust the code.
However, it is obvious that a script is needed that iterates over a
script and changes things that are easy to fix like the $a{blah} one. I
have an idea for a callback-based php parser that might be able to solve
this issue more easily, but it is just vaporware at the moment, as I
need to learn a bit more of the PHP internals before being sure it is a
practical idea.
In the mean time, let's all calm down and note that the best thing to do
is to take this course of action:
1) assume things will be broken in PHP (X+1) - a major version increase
means big changes by definition.
2) be thankful this is transparent enough that we can have enough lead
time to make small changes to legacy scripts as needed - this is why the
E_STRICT is added to PHP 5.1 now. Would you prefer a sudden break in
PHP 6 without any warning?
3) ALWAYS test RCs of releases when they come out with our critical
applications and note any breaks here, to determine whether they are
bugs or intentional changes in PHP.
Thanks,
Greg
