[Biophp-dev] PHP5 OO enhancements

[biophp-dev@bioinformatics.org]

On Wednesday 09 April 2003 09:54 pm, Dong Gregorio wrote:
> > I also get the impression
> > that PHP5 will be addressing many of the OO shortcomings that people
> > complain about.
>
> To cite two examples, PHP4 does not support data protection.
> You can get/set class properties without going through any
> get/set methods you might have written.
>
> Another limitation is that PHP4 does not support multiple
> inheritance.  I originally wanted to try a setup where a
> Sequence class was a child class of BOTH the NUCLEIC ACID
> class and the PROTEIN CLASS, but couldn't do it.
>
> While I am no die-hard OO person (sometimes the OO hierarchy
> can get ridiculously complicated like your DOG::ACTIVITY::
> SINGING::SONGPARSER::XML or UNIVERSE::MILKY WAY GALAXY::
> SOLAR SYSTEM::EARTH::USA::IDAHO::YOURSTREET::YOURDRIVEWAY),
> OO has its advantages (code reuse, easier maintenance) and
> I look forward to seeing stronger OO features in PHP5.

There appears to be an article on PHPBuilder regarding the
new features in PHP5.  Looks like there's still no multiple
inheritance, but just about everything else (to the eye of
this OO newbie, that is).  Public/Protected/Private methods
and variables, abstract classes, interfaces, try/catch exceptions, 
and a number of other things...

http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/argerich20030411.php3?page=1

Looks interesting, though obviously it'll be a while before
PHP5 becomes directly relevant to this project.  It does occur
to me, though, that we ought to settle on some sort of method
for specifying any "optional" features (PHP Version >= 5.0, Java
support, Socket support, etc.) needed by a module (and a way of segregating
those modules from the others in the layout).  Any thoughts there?