andy hates software: PHP sucks dick through a straw

• From: Andy Armstrong
  Date: 15:52 on 11 Jan 2007
  Subject: PHP sucks dick through a straw
  
  Humph. I'm writing PHP (again) today. I'm just doing a bit of munging on
  a data structure - basically turning a hash of objects some of which
  have another object in the same hash as their parent into a tree
  containing the same objects. It'd be trivial in Perl. In PHP it's not
  quite so simple. PHP really likes every assignment to be a deep copy. In
  mitigation it dangles the carrot of pretending to support references
  using the =& assignment operator. Except that:
  
      "Complex arrays are sometimes rather copied than referenced. Thus
       following example will not work as expected." [1]
  
       <?php
           $top = array(
               'A' => array(),
               'B' => array(
                   'B_b' => array(),
               ),
           );
  
           $top['A']['parent'] = &$top;
           $top['B']['parent'] = &$top;
           $top['B']['B_b']['data'] = 'test';
           print_r($top['A']['parent']['B']['B_b']); // array()
       ?>
  
  There's plenty of madness elsewhere on the same page too. In PHP4
  something as innocuous as
  
       $obj = new Object();
  
  actually makes a deep copy of the newly created object! So the idiom
  is instead
  
       $obj =& new Object();
  
  Which is OK once you get used to the ugliness - but
  
      "Since PHP 5, new return(sic) reference automatically so using =& in
       this context is deprecated and produces E_STRICT level message."
  
  So it's impossible to write code for something as simple as creating a
  new object that works right in PHP4 and still works without warnings in
  PHP5. Which of course means you give up on using E_STRICT, which means
  you don't see all the other shite that's going on - some of which might
  actually be informative.
  
  Somebody remind me why do so many people use a language that can't even
  get this completely basic stuff right.
  
  [1] http://uk.php.net/manual/en/language.references.whatdo.php
  
  (reposted from london.pm)
  
  --
  Andy Armstrong, hexten.net
  
  
  
  

• From: Andy Armstrong
  Date: 17:13 on 11 Jan 2007
  Subject: Re: PHP sucks dick through a straw
  
  On 11 Jan 2007, at 15:52, Andy Armstrong wrote:
  >    "Complex arrays are sometimes rather copied than referenced. Thus
  >     following example will not work as expected." [1]
  
  Although in fact this does work on both PHP 4.4.4 and PHP 5.2.0. Way  
  to go with the alarmist documentation which means I still don't know  
  whether it's right or just happens to work.
  
  In fact if there's one thing I hate more than PHP itself right now  
  it's the fact that its online documentation is rammed to the gills  
  with cargo-culted half truths, suspicions and downright rubbish.
  
  <?php
  
       $list = array(
           '1' => array(
               'name'      => 'Frib',
               'parent_id' => '3'
           ),
           '2' => array(
               'name'      => 'Frob',
               'parent_id' => '3'
           ),
           '3' => array(
               'name'      => 'Top 1',
               'parent_id' => null
           ),
           '4' => array(
               'name'      => 'Top 2',
               'parent_id' => null
           ),
           '5' => array(
               'name'      => 'Frub',
               'parent_id' => '4'
           ),
           '6' => array(
               'name'      => 'Freb',
               'parent_id' => '4'
           )
       );
  
       $root = array();
  
       foreach ($list as $id => $obj) {
           if (is_null($obj['parent_id'])) {
               $root[] =& $list[$id];
           } else {
               $list[$obj['parent_id']]['children'][] =& $list[$id];
           }
       }
  
       print_r($root);
  
  ?>
  
  
  
  

Generated at 10:28 on 16 Apr 2008 by mariachi