Expose AST of classes and functions via reflection

[nikic]

Expose AST of classes and functions via reflection

[nikic]

As the syntax tree is discarded after compilation, reflection would effectively have to do the same as you describe: Parse the entire file and locate the desired node. (We'd also still have the problem of not being able to distinguish between two closures on the same line.)

Probably still useful. I won't be able to add this to reflection from here, but I can add functions to get the AST of specific classes and functions.

[TimeToogo]

That would be nice for built in functionality.
Perhaps PHP could eventually expose methods for absolute offsets of the code:

ReflectionFunctionAbstract::getStartOffset();
ReflectionFunctionAbstract::getEndOffset();

And remove all ambiguity and needless hoops that are currently being jumped through.

Sadly this takes some of the excitement away from this project for me, due to this becoming essentially a faster version of your php-parser project :/

[andyjansson]

@nikic Any reason why the AST is discarded after compilation? Couldn't it be saved alongside the opcode cache?

[nikic]

@andyjansson Syntax trees are large structures. Keeping them in memory for all functions would skyrocket our memory usage.

[nikic]

Here's the ticket for more accurate position information: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=70024 Even if we don't add it to the AST, we can at least add the info to reflection.

[nikic]

Closing this, as it's out of scope for this extension and would require upstream changes in any case.