PHP is such an ugly language

ugly_nowdoc.php

<?php
class MyClass
{
    static function myMethod(
        $x = <<<'FOO'
Hello
FOO
, $y = <<<'BAR'
 PHP_Depend
BAR
    ) {
        echo $x, $y;
    }
}

+1 :)

You must always be aware on which line your comma, closing parenthesis etc. is! This sucks!!!11oneleven

Umm, why not just do:

<?php
class MyClass
{
    static function myMethod($x = 'Hello', $y = ' PHP_Depend') {
        echo $x, $y;
    }
}

@asgrim

because it works :] But, to be serious. I would always do it similar to your example, but the intention of this gist was to show how ugly PHP is sometimes. And I am totally sad that it is so ...

@manuelpichler

I see! To be fair to PHP, I think any language could be made to look ugly, I think it's just much easier to make ugly code using PHP over any other language. But yes, you're right, that is some awfully ugly code right there.

@asgrim

this wasn't a home brewed example, to promote PHP_Depenend. I have found it in project where PHP_Depend's parser failed to parse the source coce.

"A project" as in "in production" ? Very nice, always good to see what php can do if you hit it hard enough. Thanks for sharing

@edorian

"A project" as in "in production"!!!11

:) I have the same problem with PHP_CodeSniffer. Seems we are both privileged enough to get a chance to look at some incredibly messy code via bug reports.

@gsherwood Yes same applies for PHP_Depend and PHPMD bug reports :-] Maybe we should create a shared repository for our projects, where we collect all those ugly code fragments for our test suites!?

By the way, have you already looked at the PHP-Parser project[1]?

[1] https://github.com/nikic/PHP-Parser

At least one place where the language is consistent, no special rules on constant expressions in different places.

@johannes

Maybe this is one of the consistent features in PHP, but in my totally personal opinion this language construct was/is already for simple variables an unreadable crap, and so I was more or less shocked, when I realized that you can use here-/nowdoc nearly everywhere.

It is an constant expression, why create an extra rule limiting this? This brings complexity to the parser etc. If people want to do bad things they always can, inventing arbitrary artificial unneeded limitations is bad and makes the language more complex. We have cases which look like arbitrary limitations in the syntax, and that's always a pain ...

I do not critizes this syntax consistency at all, but I hate/dislike the now- and heredoc syntax in general from the first day and so this usage looks so ugly for me.