[Typo3-dev] PHP problem revived

[Kasper Skårhøj]

Hi Folks.

Christian Jul Jensen has previously reported to this list that stuff
like, say:

is_array($TCA['pages']['columns']['title'])

will spawn an error in PHP5 if say, "$TCA['pages']" is not an array.

The solution would be
if (
	is_array($TCA['pages']) &&
	is_array($TCA['pages']['columns']) &&
	is_array($TCA['pages']['columns']['title']) )

...

This is not acceptable to us. This would bloat the code so many places.
Christian went further into the issue and discovered something else
which he perceived as a reproducible inconsistency in PHP5. He posted it
to the bug-tracker for PHP but got back an (somewhat rude) answer that
he should not ask support questions about PHP there. Anyways, Christian
can be asked for the true and complete details of the story if anyone is
interested.


My main point/question is: 
If we are right about this problem and that it really *IS* something
that could fairly be considered an inconsistency in PHP5 - which the
PHP5 people are not willing to fix - what do we do?

To me this is dejavu; As you all know ImageMagick has been changing
behavior for all the years from version to version making it simply
impossible to maintain an API that would work with all versions.
Sometimes it didn't even work at all. Other times it was (provable!) GD2
bugs which lead to the mistaken idea that TYPO3 was buggy (like in the
iX article 3 years ago!)
I predict that as soon as PHP5 is in some way deemed final, it will
float into our mailing list with harsh comments about TYPO3 not being
PHP5 compatible and *any* notion from our side that we can prove an
inconsistency which is a bug in PHP5 but which no one cared to fix will
be ignored.
So we are here again: TYPO3 gets the blame for a bug in the base
software!

I'm presenting you this case because I'm too old to figth these battles
alone. 

What can the community do?
Are we big enough to apply some pressure on the PHP5 development team to
pay attension to this issue (provided that we have a strong case)?




-- 
Best regards

- kasper

--------------------
It's not a bug, it's a missing feature.