PHP Bug #18556 : Setting locale to 'tr_TR' lowercases class names • Hacker News Board

Re: PHP Bug #18556 : Setting locale to 'tr_TR' lowercases class names

#131

Post by acdha » Tue, Jul 03, 2012, 4:03 PM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #88

Udo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing the case insensitivity of PHP identifiers is a good idea. I suspect breakage would be minimal and easily fixable. One has to keep in mind that variable names are already case sensitive in PHP, and most (reasonably good) code I've seen in the wild does honor the spelling of class and method names. Of course it will never happen, but I really think this would be a great idea for the next major version. Backwar…

I doubt that breakage would be minimal. I'm not as certain as you that most code does honor the spelling of class and method names, but even if we assume that this is the case I'd assume that there are tons of undetected errors. Currently, there's just no way to test that you're using the proper spelling, so nobody does.

Having seen the hairballs of creative PHP in the wild, I'd think the only sane way to do this would be some sort of deprecation warning whenever a symbol lookup matched only case insensitively.

Re: PHP Bug #18556 : Setting locale to 'tr_TR' lowercases class names

#132

Post by Xylakant » Tue, Jul 03, 2012, 5:03 PM UTC

acdha wrote: post #131

Xylakant wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt that breakage would be minimal. I'm not as certain as you that most code does honor the spelling of class and method names, but even if we assume that this is the case I'd assume that there are tons of undetected errors. Currently, there's just no way to test that you're using the proper spelling, so nobody does.

Having seen the hairballs of creative PHP in the wild, I'd think the only sane way to do this would be some sort of deprecation warning whenever a symbol lookup matched only case insensitively.

Like the ones that they introduced to fix array[key_without_quotes] where key_without_quotes was mapped to a string if it was not a defined constant and a NOTICE was issued? The first thing everyone did was turn off E_NOTICE since practically all code emitted that notice. It took years until you could run apps with E_NOTICE turned on :)

Re: PHP Bug #18556 : Setting locale to 'tr_TR' lowercases class names

#133

Post by jasonlotito » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 3:03 PM UTC

flatline3 wrote: post #121

jasonlotito wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> PHP is broken and should never be used, and if there are use cases that the alternatives don't address, we should work to address them. What alternatives meet your standards of not sharing qualities of PHP while matching the quality of simplicity in deployment (of which Python and Ruby instantly fail)?

I don't think any language matches the simplicity of deployment, but outside some very constrained use cases in environments where there can not be sufficient technical expertise and staffing, deployment doesn't begin to justify the technical travesty of PHP. In a corporate technology organization there is no justification.

I assume then that there are also no languages that don't share qualities with PHP?

Re: PHP Bug #18556 : Setting locale to 'tr_TR' lowercases class names

#134

Post by Tloewald » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 6:41 PM UTC

secoif wrote: post #78

Tloewald wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that the kicker is the obviously superior alternatives, such as python, ruby, and JavaScript, don't offer the ease of deployment that php has via mod_php, and instead insist on the developer writing a web server. While there are advantages (performance, control) to the web server approach it is clear that there are advantages (simplicty) to being able to stick code snippets in web pages. If you could d…

I don't know any rails developer who has written a web server, where did you get that idea? Many use mod_rails via nginx or apache: http://www.modrails.com/ Also, PAAS offerings like Heroku and Engine Yard make deploying sophisticated rails environments far more convenient than their PHP equivalent. > "sticking code snippets in web pages" You can do exactly this in ruby with ERB, but many shy away from this approach…

I've tried rails, years ago. Don't like its fundamental design. My life remains unchanged.

BTW how do you think rails serves web pages?

Re: PHP Bug #18556 : Setting locale to 'tr_TR' lowercases class names

#135

Post by acdha » Thu, Jul 05, 2012, 2:50 PM UTC

Xylakant wrote: post #132

acdha wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having seen the hairballs of creative PHP in the wild, I'd think the only sane way to do this would be some sort of deprecation warning whenever a symbol lookup matched only case insensitively.

Like the ones that they introduced to fix array[key_without_quotes] where key_without_quotes was mapped to a string if it was not a defined constant and a NOTICE was issued? The first thing everyone did was turn off E_NOTICE since practically all code emitted that notice. It took years until you could run apps with E_NOTICE turned on :)

True: I spent years swimming upstream trying to get PHP developers to log sensibly and actually fix problems rather than suppressing the notices, which is probably why I'm much happier with the Python community.