Your example would be handled by

$reader = new StreamReader($stream);
$reader->write('blahblahblah');
$reader = null; // $reader->__destruct() called

Objects and values are destroyed as soon as the last reference to them goes away. Remove those references, destroy the object.


$start = microtime(true);

class foo{
	private $name;
function __construct($name) {
	$this->name = $name;
}
function __destruct() {
	echo $this->name." Destroyed at ".(microtime(true)-$GLOBALS['start'])." seconds\n";
}

}

$t1 = new foo('t1');
$t2 = new foo('t2');
$t3 = new foo('t3');

echo "Set \$t1 to null at ".(microtime(true)-$start)." seconds\n";
$t1 = null;
echo "Sleep 5 seconds\n";
sleep(5);
echo "Replace \$t2 with \$t3 at ".(microtime(true)-$start)." seconds\n";
$t2 = $t3;
echo "Sleep 5 seconds\n";
sleep(5);

I know that's a solution to cope with this. However code-wise it will be cleaner to let only live the reader variable of a certain scope.

It would be nice if we could have a similar 'using(...){..}' keyword which would allow to control the scope of code block and force the disposal of the object/resource.

Thanks to this feature you could potentially do something like this:

<?

using(new Brace('div')){
  echo 'DIV INNER TEXT';
}
//this would output:<div>DIV INNER TEXT</div>

class Brace{
 private $tag;
 function __construct($tag) {
  $this->tag=$tag;
  echo "<$this->tag>";
 }
 function __destruct() {
  echo "</$this->tag>";
 }
}

?>

> However code-wise it will be cleaner to let only live the reader
> variable of a certain scope.

You can use function scope:

    (function () {
        $reader = XMLReader::XML('<root/>');
        var_dump($reader->read());
    })();

Given that this only slightly more verbose than the suggested
using statement, and given that that feature likely would be
implemented like the above alternative, I don't see much value in
it.  If anybody feels strongly about needing the feature, please
pursue the RFC process[1].  For the time being, I'm suspending
this ticket.

[1] <https://wiki.php.net/rfc/howto>