PHP Internals News: Episode 92: First Class Callable Syntax
In this episode of "PHP Internals News" I chat with Nikita Popov (Twitter, GitHub, Website) about the "First Class Callable Syntax" RFC.
The RSS feed for this podcast is https://derickrethans.nl/feed-phpinternalsnews.xml, you can download this episode's MP3 file, and it's available on Spotify and iTunes. There is a dedicated website: https://phpinternals.news
Transcript
- Derick Rethans 0:14
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Hi, I'm Derick. Welcome to PHP internals news, the podcast dedicated to explaining the latest developments in the PHP language. This is Episode 92. Today I'm talking with Nikita Popov about a first class callable syntax RFC that he's proposing together with Joe Watkins. Nikita, would you please introduce yourself?
- Nikita Popov 0:36
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Hi, Derick. I'm Nikita and I am still working at JetBrains. And still working on PHP core development.
- Derick Rethans 0:43
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Just like about half an hour ago when we recorded an earlier episode.
- Nikita Popov 0:47
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Exactly.
- Derick Rethans 0:48
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This RFC has no relation to read only properties. What is the first class callable syntax RFC about?
- Nikita Popov 0:55
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The context here is that PHP has the callable syntax based on literals, which is that if you just use a plain string, it's interpreted as a function name, and an array where the first element is an object, and the second one is a method name, that's methods. Or the first element is the class name, and the second one is method name, that's a static method.
- Derick Rethans 1:17
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I would consider this concept a bit of a hack, especially the the one with the arrays, and I reckon you feel similar and hence this RFC?
- Nikita Popov 1:27
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Yes, I do. So the current callable syntax has a couple of issues. I think the core issue is that it's not really analysable. So if you see this kind of like array with two strings inside it, it could just be an array with two strings, you don't know if that's supposed to actually be a static method reference. If you look at the context of where it is used, you might be able to figure out that actually, this is a callable. And like in your IDE, if you rename this method, then this array should also be this array element will also be renamed. But there's like a lot of complex reasoning that the static analyser has to perform. That's one
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