PHP finally gets finally

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/finally?&#changelog

by TazeTSchnitzel • 14 years ago

78 23 14 years ago

wiki.php.net

This is an exciting step forward for being able to prevent repetitious code and handle exceptions more elegantly. More excitement will be had when we actually see this implemented in an upcoming version.

In case you are wondering why this link goes to the bottom of the page, the important bit is:

2012/08/13 Xinchen Hui: Close voting, RFC win the voting

The RFC is a bit dry and does explain some use cases, however, GoogleGuy (who is a really nice and helpful guy in the ##php channel) provided a wonderful explanation[1] that goes into more detail.

Accepting the RFC is just the first step, let's hope we can see this in the next version.

[1] http://sheriframadan.com/2012/08/finally-keyword-in-php/

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

Oh, it will be, laruence is merging into master. Although whether it is 5.5 or 6.0 remains to be seen.

Also, looks like generators may come to vote soon since NikiC has asked on mailing list about it. http://wiki.php.net/rfc/generators

kijin• 14 years ago

This should have been implemented back in PHP 5.0, when exceptions were first introduced. A try-catch block without finally is only half complete!

But it's great to see half-complete features becoming fully complete, even if a few years late.

TazeTSchnitzel2• 14 years ago

The main argument against it (that keeps coming up on ML) is destructors and resources cleaning up after themselves. Pretty weak argument though.

ceol• 14 years ago

Yes, considering OOP and exceptions are not dependent on each other.

augusto_hp• 14 years ago

It is definitely great. Although missed this for quite some years now, it is quite pleasing to see how the language continue to evolve throughout the years :)

meritt2• 14 years ago

You should talk to Bjarne about leaving it out of C++ :)

ori_b• 14 years ago

C++ has a finally equivalent in a different form: Every object gets to clean up at the end of the scope as part of it's destructor. If you're not using RAII to manage cleaning up resources at the end of a scope, it's probably a good idea to change your style a bit.

ExpiredLink• 14 years ago

PHP has no destructors?

pixelbath• 14 years ago

How did you get that information from this post? PHP has had destructors in some form since 4.x, and true class destructors in 5.x: http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.decon.php

meritt2• 14 years ago

My guess is he's from the C++ camp who tend to always suggest RAII as a replacement for 'finally' and RAII relies upon destructors.

chc• 14 years ago

Destructors aren't a good way to free resources in a garbage collected language.

true_religion• 14 years ago

Does ref-counting count as garbage collection?

tomjen3• 14 years ago

I have yet to see a language that actually cleans up after itself. Many will attempt to free memory, but what about files, db connections, windows, sockets?

pjbeardsley• 14 years ago

Finally.

irunbackwards• 14 years ago

Is it possible to see the reasoning behind the 'no' votes?

sharken• 14 years ago

Short of asking the involved parties, the best you can do is to follow some of the PHP discussions on this topic, such as this one http://www.mail-archive.com/internals@lists.php.net/msg59731...

The first use-case for finally involved locking database tables, and then unlocking them in the finally clause. It would be pretty bad, if you could not guarantee the unlock would happen. So one would hope that has been properly taken care of :-)

PaulHoule• 14 years ago

sugoi!

Joeri• 14 years ago

I always loved the first response to the request to implement finally. It was so delightfully arrogant.

https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=32100

By the way, if you scroll down in that page there are two workaround solutions to get the finally behavior on any php5 version.

spdy• 14 years ago

Does it now catch system exceptions as well? Something that drove me away from php that i was not able to catch all errors inside an exception block.

wwweston• 14 years ago

I think this has been possible more or less since PHP introduced exceptions by using `set_error_handler`:

http://php.net/manual/en/function.set-error-handler.php

along with a function that throws exceptions, e.g.:

function exception_on_error($errnum,$errmsg) { throw new ErrorException($errmsg,$errnum); }

You can't catch all errors (sensibly including compile errors and unhandled exception errors), but it can get you pretty far.

Not that there aren't other reasons not to use PHP, but this one is manageable.

PHP finally gets finally

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