Re: [PHP-DEV] Remove alternative PHP tags

On Tue, Sep 9, 2014 at 6:32 PM, Andrea Faulds <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> On 10 Sep 2014, at 01:21, Andrea Faulds <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > Isn’t this a bit of a needless BC break? Not very nice on people with
> such codebases. It’s also worth pointing out that people might be using
> these to get around the XML <? issue (granted, you can disable short tags).
> >
> > I’d vote for this if you wrote a convertor script to help people
> migrate. Otherwise I think we’re just being unfair on people who used these
> tags.
> >
> > Actually, I’d like to see a Python 2to3-esque tool in general for PHP 7.
> The easier we make the migration, the more likely people will do it.
>
> Some further thoughts after discussing with Tyrael (Ferenc) on IRC.
>
> I initially thought that I’m not really against removing them really, but
> I think we should have a script to convert them first. Because someone,
> somewhere, is gonna need it.
>
> But then I’ve thought more about it. I’m usually OK with certain BC
> breaks, I just don’t like this specific one. It doesn’t affect me, but,
> well, I don’t see the point. It doesn’t really help language consistency or
> anything, (OK, sure, only two sets of delimeters now, but it’s not a big
> deal like some other things are), and you’ll force people to update every
> file in their codebase if they’re affected, assuming people who use
> alternative tags use them everywhere. There’s also a security issue here.
> If someone uses PHP 7 with a codebase that has these alternative tags, your
> code is now visible to users instead of the output, which might include
> configuration details like database passwords or password hash salts. It’s
> also possible that people won’t notice this is happening if they only used
> these alternative tags in a few obscure places.
>
> I wonder if, really, we might be better off keeping them around and just
> outputting E_DEPRECATED. If we do get rid of them in 7, we should have 5.7
> deprecate them.
> --
> Andrea Faulds
> http://ajf.me/
>
>
>
>
>
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>
I think Andrea raises a valid point about BC.  I agree that those old tags
should go, but I'd suggest we target that removal for PHP 7 and just add a
deprecated flag on 5.x.

--Kris