The other day, I had to write a PHP script that reads a csv file of addresses and outputs the longitude and latitude of every address in the file.
Since I haven’t done a lot of PHP recently, I had to look in the documentation for the function that reads a file into an array because I couldn’t remember the name.
There is a reason for that: the name of this function is (take a deep breath):
file
Who can remember a function name that doesn’t relate to what it’s supposed to do?
In Cocoa, we have « arrayWithContentsOfFile« , and when reading some code, if you find
varName = [NSArray arrayWithContentsOfFile:someData];
Even with non-significant variable names as in this example, you can understand what this assignment does.
But when you read
varName = file(someData);
You have no clue, unless you code in PHP everyday.
I really can’t understand the logic behind the naming of functions in PHP.
Example:
Why do we have « utf8_encode« , « json_encode » but « urlencode« ?
PHP is really teh suck.
PS: I do prefer Perl as a scripting language, perhaps because I’ve done more Perl in my life than PHP. I must admit that
@varName = <someData>;
isn’t clearer, but I do prefer it.
PS2: while ranting about PHP, I wondered what was the longest method name in Cocoa, so with the help of a Perl script, here are my findings:
MacOSX 10.5:
managedObjectContextsToMonitorWhenSyncingPersistentStoreCoordinator
67 chars, I’m glad to have auto-completion in Xcode.
iPhone SDK 2.2.1
willAnimateSecondHalfOfRotationFromInterfaceOrientation
Only 55 chars, still auto-completion is a must!