What is new and exciting in PHP 5.3?

gord wrote: post #4

Link to a link - http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/what-is-new-in-php-53-for... Now php 5.3 has lambdas, 'pharchives' :] and namespaces plus other goodness... I wonder why they used a slash as the namespace scope clarifier - why not '::' or just '.' ? I'm not dissing PHP, Ive used it, its handy, fast sturdy, ubiquitous.. but you feel the syntax works against you.

There was a really big argument at the time, the crux of which was that since the PHP parser isn't context aware they had to use a symbol that wasn't used elsewhere. :: is used for static calls, . is used for concatenation.

So the choice ended up being between ::: and the backslash, the backslash being chosen because it is easier to type.

Re: What is new and exciting in PHP 5.3?

#6

Post by acangiano » Sat, Mar 28, 2009, 1:02 PM UTC

Flagged and resubmitted the original here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=536422

Re: What is new and exciting in PHP 5.3?

#7

Post by geuis » Sat, Mar 28, 2009, 1:23 PM UTC

I'm just looking at php nowadays and, after having worked with it for many years, have just decided that I want server-side javascript. The new features are nice, but the language itself is still scattered and inconsistent in areas.

There's a lot of interesting work being done at http://groups.google.com/group/serverjs?hl=en and https://wiki.mozilla.org/ServerJS

Re: What is new and exciting in PHP 5.3?

#8

Post by habibur » Sat, Mar 28, 2009, 1:28 PM UTC

rossriley wrote: post #5

gord wrote: post #4

Link to a link - http://www.webdigi.co.uk/blog/2009/what-is-new-in-php-53-for... Now php 5.3 has lambdas, 'pharchives' :] and namespaces plus other goodness... I wonder why they used a slash as the namespace scope clarifier - why not '::' or just '.' ? I'm not dissing PHP, Ive used it, its handy, fast sturdy, ubiquitous.. but you feel the syntax works against you.

There was a really big argument at the time, the crux of which was that since the PHP parser isn't context aware they had to use a symbol that wasn't used elsewhere. :: is used for static calls, . is used for concatenation. So the choice ended up being between ::: and the backslash, the backslash being chosen because it is easier to type.

Would like to add that the other best choice single colon ":" might have been a good candidate too. But PHP 5.3 also introduced the age old goto command, and colon was assigned to for labeling goto targets.