Re: [PHP-LANG] "Mission Statement"

On Tue, 21 Nov 2000, Zeev Suraski wrote:

> At 02:04 21/11/2000, Sascha Schumann wrote:
> >     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.
>
> You have a point there, but since we're not planning to become Java
> anywhere in the near future, I think we need to find something in the middle.
> I think that documenting platform specific behavior, clearly denoting it as
> such, is acceptable.

    I tend to think of PHP as a high-level language where the
    properties of the underlying platform are hardly visible.

    Regardless of that, certain properties should be left
    implementation-defined. The specification should specify
    minimal requirements in such cases. For example:

        An integer can at least represent the values in the
        closed interval [-(2^31); 2^31-1].

    (Note that this is an incomplete example; the real spec will
    have to say something about what happens when those bounds
    are exceeded.)

    Having said that, I think we should keep the "portable"
    keyword in the Mission statement. Even though some things
    will be implementation-dependent, the lowest common deminator
    will be present in definitions like the one above, striving
    for portability of user scripts.

    - Sascha