On Saturday 02 May 2009 9:30:09 am Colin Guthrie wrote:
> 'Twas brillig, and Paul M Foster at 02/05/09 06:07 did gyre and gimble:
> > If this is going away, how do you return things by reference, so as to
> > ensure a single copy of something (yes, I know the singleton pattern can
> > be used; I do use it as well; it's more complicated)?
>
> You'll want to use the Singleton design pattern here.
>
> Let's say you're config object is a class.
That's well and good if the thing you want a single copy of is an object. The
way objects pass in PHP 5 makes singletons easy. But I actually just
developed a system for PHP 5.2 that includes a class that deliberately allows
a caller to reach in and grab an internal array-based data structure for
special cases.
class Foo {
protected $internalConfig = array(...);
public function &getConfig() {
return $this->internalConfig;
}
}
$foo = new Foo();
...
$config = &$foo->getConfig();
// Do stuff to $config that wouldn't make sense to do via methods.
So do I understand the OP correctly that is going to break with PHP 6 now? I
certainly hope not, as that would be incredibly short sighted and stupid.
There are plenty of use cases for returning by reference besides making PHP 4
objects behave correctly.
--
Larry Garfield
larry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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