Re: fgets()/fgetss() BC break in HEAD

At 13:04 15/11/2006, Sara Golemon wrote:

Sara, My IQ is higher than 12, and I don't see how defensive coding could have defended against this BC break. This code is missing error checking, but that could be quite reasonable (e.g. if you check ahead of time that the file is big enough to match the format you're expecting - so it's not perfect, but it's quite reasonable). But even if it did have error checking, it would look something like this: $field_X = fgets($file, 10); if (strlen($field_X) != 9) { barf(); } So, after the BC break, it'd barf. There's really no way to protect against this BC break, and it's pretty clear this behavior is being relied upon.

That's fine by me, but I think it's a different issue. The BC break should be reverted irregardless... Zeev

PHP Developer 1: Let's change functionality for some widely-used function and break BC, because we can and it is so much fun! PHP Developer 2: You know, breaking BC is not nice, people really rely on it and try to write code which works in all PHP versions... P1: What people, nobody uses this functionality anyway! P2: I think there might be people using it, we have a lot of developers and apps out there now, and the manual explicitly says it works like that, so maybe we should leave it alone? P1: I bet you money nobody uses it! P2: Here are code examples of real applications using it. P1: Those people are dumb, we are smart, so we'll break BC anyway because we can't care for all stupid people reading the manual and expecting PHP to work according to it! They should read the source for PHP version they run and figure the stuff out from the source! P2: So, you say reading manual and programming according to the docs is bad? P1: Ouch, those bureaucrats... OK, if you insist, you got it - we'll change the manual too! P2: But what about BC? P1: If you are too dumb or lazy to reread the manual every week - it's your fault, you are too dumb to use PHP! Go use C where they keep all the stuff back from 70s! What's wrong with this dialogue?

Yes, you only forgot the part about going back in time 10 years and doing it back then :)

On Wed, November 15, 2006 3:04 pm, Sara Golemon wrote:

While I don't know the IQ chart well, nor its applicability to this discussion, it would seem that there are more than a few scripts "out there" that relied on the documented behaviour... I don't really care what a person's IQ is -- I've seen some horribly designed, written, and executed scripts that did some pretty nifty and amazing and creative things. I believe that one of PHP's strengths is that almost anybody can latch onto it and start using it, whether they have any idea how to work it properly or not. Obviously, this has caused problems in the past, and will cause problems in the future -- But I think the problems are worth it, as it has also cause a wealth of community, of users, of creative [mis-]applications of PHP that is sorely lacking in some other "less fun" languages. If you want to have an IQ-filter before a user can play with a language, send them off to use C++ or something. :-)