On 24 Mar 2014, at 09:15, Ivan Enderlin @ Hoa <[email protected]> wrote:
> All these projects are great for PHP! Yes they are! But, most of these implementations,
> interpreters, extensions wrappers etc., are incomplete or propose extra features that is not in the
> historical interpreter. The need of a PHP specification/standard is more and more important:
> language syntax, semantics, features, extensions API, etc., must be specified in order to see more
> collaborations and quality tools.
>
> We can imagine seeing new contributors on the specification, and whatever the implementation,
> it will benefit to the users and developers. Yes it will take a lot of time. Yes it will be
> difficult. Yes it will reveal some leaks in the historical interpreter. Yes the language will be
> more important than the interpreter. But it will give us a lead, a path to follow, a goal, and
> moreover, it will ensure the same experience to all PHP users no matter the interpreters they used.
>
> If a new interpreter provides a nice feature, then, a discussion can start to update the
> standard, but if there is no one, which interpreter will be chosen by the user? If there is a
> standard, we can compare interpreters regarding this standard and not idiotic benchmarks that show
> anything.
>
> Finally, I think that internal@ is responsible to start such a standardization process because
> this group has made the historical interpreter. In addition, I think that internal@ is also
> responsible to promote this standard and invite other actors to collaborate. These last years, PHP
> has shown a new face, a face of unity and pragmatism (new release process, RFC debates etc.). Such a
> standardization process will be strong and can really put PHP forward.
I agree, I think PHP needs a specification. For one thing, a reference implementation is no real
specification. It can’t be easily consulted, and it also means that any reference implementation
bug might be considered a language feature, which other implementations must have. Having a proper
specification would mean documentation for users would be easier, too. I suppose the specification
could become the documentation.
However, care would need to be taken when drafting it to make sure that we are careful to reflect
PHP as it actually is (i.e. how the reference implementation behaves), and not necessarily PHP as it
ought to be. If PHP in practise does not match the specification, it may be useless.
PHP’s current reference implementation and its behaviour are wildly inconsistent and, frankly, a
bit of a mess. If we were to specify PHP, we should do so after a major cleanup, say in PHP 6. At
the moment, just specifying the ++ operator would require a page.
--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/