You’re using what!?

Yet another reason I will avoid PHP at all costs. The head developers of PHP have decided, after much discussion, to make the back-slash the name-space separator when referencing classes. Thats’s right, this\is\a\tree\valid\variable. I’m sorry, a back-slash? This will create no end of confusion and frustration when it comes to parsers and syntax highlighters. What was wrong with the period? How about ‘::’ as in: a::valid::namespace?

One of the (small) reasons I like Linux that the only reason I have to use a back-slash is for special control characters. Seeing back-slashes all over my code would be even more jarring than the supposed “white space” problem some people have with Python.

For more on the decision, read the RFC. For discussion, Reddit has the usual.

It boggles the mind.