Alan Knowles wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-08-08 at 23:08 -0700, Andi Gutmans wrote:
>
>>You are wrong because __autoload() *is* called and you can load the class
>>on the-fly. The only problem is if the class does not exist in your code
>>base, in which case, your application should blow up!
>
>
> The basic point is that is_a() provided negative testing of non-existant
> classes
> if (!is_a($obj, "SomeRarelyUsedClass")) { ....
>
> instance_of does not, and can not, at present.
>
> This technique is already frequently used to cope with lazy loaded code,
> which even with cached code compilers, is pretty damn efficient in a
> scripted language (less IO operations, less parsing, less memory...)
>
> It is not about the fact we 'can' load the class, but that we dont
> 'want' to load the class.. - it's a waste of resources, memory, cpu etc.
> just for the sake of CS perfection..
>
> Last time I looked PHP was about getting thing done efficiently, not
> about giving your university professor a woody... ;)
I agree with Alan. I guess lazy loading is the key here and __autoload()
to me is about being able to do just that. However if we trigger the
lazy loading mechanism all over the place, then that defeats the
purpose. However like I said the straighforward solution is to
underecate is_a() and leave instanceof as is.
regards,
Lukas
