Re: [PHP-LANG] "Mission Statement"

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Zeev Suraski wrote:

> At 01:51 21/11/2000, Sascha Schumann wrote:
> >On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Zeev Suraski wrote:
> >
> > > I'd say that it exists to develop the language specification for PHP
> > > period.  I don't see how portability or vendor independence have anything
> > > to do with it...
> >
> >     Here is a short explanation for both terms, in the context of
> >     last week's netmask thread (on zend-cvs).
> >
> >     Portability:
> >
> >         The ``hack'' relies on the host platform's long being
> >         32-bit which makes it non-portable. This particular
> >         feature and similar ones should not be part of the
> >         specification.
>
> So I'm not sure I agree about the portability part.  Reality is much more
> important than perfection.

    Would you want to standardize a feature which works on
    Linux/ia32, but not on Linux/Alpha?

    That is reality, as far as I am concerned, and something
    which we should not simply put aside.

> There could be many things that were born as side effects of
> implementation, but if they're here to stay, there's no reason to make them
> a part of the language.  It should be possible to implement just about
> anything under a different implementation as well.  At any rate, I guess
> we'll have to see about this one as time goes by.

    Well, we will have to evaluate the impact of a particular
    feature and come to a decision on whether it is a valid
    behaviour which we want to continue or a mere side-effect.
    Most things in PHP are well understood, but there are some
    areas (like reference passing) which are neither well-
    understood (by the users) nor well-defined.

    - Sascha