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Doc Bug #33355 SPL throws E_STRICT warnings as exceptions
Submitted: 2005-06-15 17:14 UTC Modified: 2005-08-16 20:13 UTC
From: jr at terragate dot net Assigned: helly (profile)
Status: Closed Package: Documentation problem
PHP Version: 5.0.4 OS: *
Private report: No CVE-ID: None
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 [2005-06-15 17:14 UTC] jr at terragate dot net 
Description:
------------
Currently SPL sets the error_handling to EH_THROW which will 
cause any E_WARNING or E_STRICT message to be thrown as 
exception regardless of error_reporting's settings.

This renders most code with compatibility in mind (e.g. 
PEAR) useless in SPL context since there is no way to ignore 
non fatal warnings.

At least E_STRICT messages shouldn't be thrown if it is 
disabled in error_reporting. 

But this might still be confusing. E_STRICT massages should 
be treated as compile time warnings (as in most other 
languages). They shouln't affect the control flow if not 
explicitly requested.

Generally the same applies to E_WARNING and E_USER_WARNING 
as long as there is no way to disable EH_THROW in user space 
php code.   

IMHO EH_THROW should be completly disabled or the error mode 
should be made controlable:

// ignore warnings from this wrapper
error_mode(EH_NORMAL);
$it = new DirectoryIterator('legacywrapper://path/');

// I want to stop on some warnings
error_mode(EH_THROW);
try {
  $it = new DirectoryIterator('legacywrapper://path/');
} catch(Exception $e) {
  // parse exception which might contain an E_WARNING 
message 
  // this is not really OO but it works
  ...
  if($criticalWarning) {
    // bail out
    throw new AMoreAppropriateException();
  } else { 
    // non critical warning trying again with EH_NORMAL
    // using normal php error/warning handling here
    ...
  }
}

As long as all warnings are thrown as 'Exception' the 
EH_THROW mode can't be used as different warnings cannot be 
easily distinguished.






Reproduce code:
---------------
<?php

error_reporting(E_ALL & ~E_NOTICE & ~E_STRICT);

class StreamWrapper
{
  public function dir_opendir($path, $options) {
    return !is_a(null, 'AKnownOrUnknownClass');
  }

  public function dir_readdir() {
    return array();
  }

}

stream_wrapper_register('test', 'StreamWrapper');


echo "Done\n";

?>


Expected result:
----------------
Output of "Done"

Actual result:
--------------
Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'is_a
(): Deprecated. Please use the instanceof operator' in /Users/
reith2/Projects/php/bug-new.php:8
Stack trace:
#0 /Users/reith2/Projects/php/bug-new.php(8): is_a(NULL, 
'AKnownOrUnknown...')
#1 /Users/reith2/Projects/php/bug-new.php(18): StreamWrapper-
>dir_opendir('test://path/', 4)
#2 /Users/reith2/Projects/php/bug-new.php(18): 
DirectoryIterator->__construct('test://path/')
#3 {main}

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 [2005-06-16 19:38 UTC] helly@php.net 
Thank you for taking the time to write to us, but this is not
a bug. Please double-check the documentation available at
http://www.php.net/manual/ and the instructions on how to report
a bug at http://bugs.php.net/how-to-report.php

In this case i don't see any motivation to change since you shouldn't be using is_a() anyway.

However the point is that unfortunatley some php internal api's do not support detailed error informations. In fact no php internal code can deliver detailed exceptions with the exception being a few xml and spl classes. Thus it is not a problem of SPL which here only makes use of other api's.

The reason SPL now needs to throw on warnings is that some of the warnings mean that the object cannot be initialized thus being in an invalid state so that it needs to be assuered that the constructor fails so that the object cannot be used.

Since i cannot distunguish the cause of the error i am forced to throw on any error. Actually i could limit it to E_WARNING but then again i'd need to change a lot of php internal things.
 [2005-08-16 11:45 UTC] jr at terragate dot net 
At least it should be documented that you cannot pass an 
object to a SPL class constructor that will cause execution 
of PHP 4 code that will raise any E_STRICT or E_WARNING 
message. 

Furthermore, IMHO, this issue have still to be fixed in some 
way as its takes much from SPLs potential and seems to be 
inconsistent from a PHP developers point of view.

Example: Browse a WebDAV share
 
This could be easily done with (Recursive)DirectoryIterator 
but the only available WebDAV stream Wrapper ( http://
pear.php.net/package/HTTP_WebDAV_Client ) is written in PHP 
4.

So you could simply write a new PHP 5 Wrapper but most of 
XML/HTTP/Network stuff have to be done from scratch as 
almost all available classes for it are still PHP 4.  



After looking into PHP internals I figured out that the is_a 
deprecation warning seems to be the only E_STRICT message in 
the code that isn't issued at compile time. 

Thus handling is_a at compile time (as its done with 
instanceof) would be another way to fix the issue but 
requires some changes to the lexer and parser.

I am willing to do this if there is a chance that such a 
modification have a chance of being applied.
 [2005-08-16 20:13 UTC] helly@php.net 
This bug has been fixed in the documentation's XML sources. Since the
online and downloadable versions of the documentation need some time
to get updated, we would like to ask you to be a bit patient.

Thank you for the report, and for helping us make our documentation better.

For the sake of old damaged code i turned of exception capturing for E_STRICT.
 
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