On Fri, Mar 14, 2025, at 19:16, Bob Weinand wrote:
> Hey Rob,
>
> On 6.3.2025 00:11:22, Rob Landers wrote:
>> Hello PHP Internals,
>>
>> I'd like to introduce my RFC for discussion: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/short-and-inner-classes
> A small note on the Reflection section: it should include a method giving you an array of all
> contained ReflectionClasses: $reflection->getInnerClasses()
>
> And likely also a method to get an inner class by name
> $reflection->getInnerClass("Foo").
>
>
>
> Bob
>
Classes don't actually know their inner classes -- they aren't like properties. In
essence, an inner class is just a regular class with a funny name and access to scopes it
wouldn't normally have access to. We could probably add getOuterClass(): string if
that is useful. It is possible to keep track of a class's inner classes, but then that
introduces a paradox chicken/egg type problem during construction, which may or may not be a
problem.
On Fri, Mar 14, 2025, at 22:08, Rowan Tommins [IMSoP] wrote:
> The other thing I wonder is whether the original reason why :: wasn't
> used as the namespace separator still applies, and needs to be accounted
> for here?
>
> --
> Rowan Tommins
> [IMSoP]
>
I'm replying to you Rowan, but also to the whole conversation on the topic of separating inner
classes. I was going to add this example to the RFC: https://gist.github.com/withinboredom/c007e35d3b042b87b02ac550db589a0c,
but I decided to get food poisoning for the last few hours instead. :joy:
Where using it looks like this:
$user = new
User:>Builder("Rob")->withEmail("[email protected]")->build();
The user builder is intrinsically tied to the User class itself, it isn't just a namespace. The
user builder shares scope with the user class and is able to be the only way to construct a user
(barring reflection). So, I'm inclined to agree with Bob here:
> Inner classes are supposed to be intrinsically tied to their containing class, and making it
> work like a namespace reduces the association a lot.
Furthermore, I'm relatively certain this approach can be slightly modified to support
"namespace private/protected" classes, in general. So, that will also possibly be a
follow-up RFC and having them mixed up will complicate things. In any case, I am not a fan of using
the namespace separator here.
I could get behind ::, but I feel that it introduces human ambiguity. I don't
believe it would introduce compiler ambiguity, but as a human, I have to hope the programmers are
using a style that makes it obvious what are inner classes and what are constants/methods.
I don't know, I keep coming back to :> ... it isn't perfect, and it is
somewhat annoying to type, but I don't have anything better.
— Rob