Description:
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Note : I wish I could call this "remark" as opposed to "bug", because I don't really suppose it can be solved, anyway.

The exact version of PHP used is the Jan 12 2005 18:14:35 5.0.4-dev Win32 snapshot.

When accessing object members, I am in the habit of putting spaces on either side of the object/arrow operator "->" for clarity.

It is a known situation that with such practice, the right-hand argument (the object member) had better not be named after a PHP keyword. For example :

class A {
  public $list;
  public function __construct() {
    $this -> list = 'value'; // (*)
  }
}

Line (*) generates a parse error, unexpected T_LIST, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or '{' or '$'.

That is easily resolved : it would extremely bad practice to name a member thus anyway. But what of XML nodes seen as SimpleXML objects ?

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<root>
  <list>item1, item2, item3</list>
</root>

$xml = simplexml_load_string/file(/* what is above */);
foreach ($xml -> list as $elemList) {   // (**)
  // manage the list, e.g. make it into an array...
}

Exact same problem as before on line (**), of course, because of how SimpleXML gives access to child nodes.

The issue here is that I am not the one writing the XML file, defining its XML Schema, etc. ; so I can no longer solve the problem with better naming practice. And imposing PHP practice in PHP code is consistent : it seems less so to impose PHP practice to an otherwise independant XML file.

Easiest workaround : drop the spacing on either side (or at least, the right-hand side) of the object operator, and live up the ensuing slight ugliness.

But might not something be done at a deeper level ? I imagine this crops up for all reserved words, that the parser will see as special tokens before considering that they might be object members.
But the thing is, I cannot think of any context in which the right-hand argument of an object access might _want_ to be the PHP keyword, with the functionnality induced.
I.e. is it possible for "$obj -> list" to mean anything with regard to what "list" means for PHP ?

Same for the other reserved words as far as five minutes' pondering can make out.

As I said in introduction, I don't expect it is really feasible to clear this "bug", as in make the parser see the right-hand argument of a "->" operation as a systematic object member and never imagine that it might be a special token, but I would be interested in someone from PHP providing a quick thought on this.

Thank you.