Re: [PHP] nested, referenced foreach & implicit current array pointer issues

speedy wrote:
Hello Martin,

Wednesday, January 31, 2007, 4:50:22 PM, you wrote:

There is nothing wrong with the global keyword, just use $GLOBAL
['arr'] instead to avoid the reference, or create a copy by
assignment.

Yep, already did, 10x for the suggestion. :)

Anyway, I couldn't find this change of behaviour in the foreach in
the changelog, but it seems it have been introduced around may
2005. Maybe is too late to complain, but, now that I know, I think
this behaviour doesn't seem right.

I'd rather see global being equal to $GLOBAL[] in combination with removal
of hidden current pointer from arrays. But I don't have much experience in
designing high-level languages nor did I give a lot of thought about it in the
global picture. :)

regardless of whether your right or wrong from a theoretical/language POV
(I didn't really understand your explaination completely - which is probably
my lack of insight ;-) I would proffer the following:

use of 'global' is bad practice in anything that resembles a complex/real
application. your function has no control over the what $arr is and any piece of
code code change $arr into *anything* at any time.

instead I would suggest that your better off doing one of 2 things:

1. pass in the array to the function explicitly.
2. use a special function that can be called to retrieve the array
from within your example function.

bad advice? I'm open to being corrected :-)


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