#PHP

It is a limited version of PHP, for example lacking eval()

I could imagine eval being a big resource hog, so no wonder why they decided to live without it in their version. One can make virtually anything with alternative methods.

Lack of eval() is nothing but a good thing. Theres no really need for it, I think.

@bergie But as I understand, it should be possible to make parts of your code or application to use HipHop. I can't wait to see what else is excluded (I've never directly used eval) and does it run extensions nicely.

MidCOM (the old MVC framework for Midgard1) uses tons of eval(). Midgard MVC doesn't, so services using the new stuff (like Qaiku) could theoretically run on top of HipHop.

I just wonder how HipHop handles PHP extensions...

Rasmus Lerdorf: HipHop on simpler template-style PHP pages probably isn't going to help you too much. It's not going to make your SQL queries any faster.

Whats definition for "simpler template-style PHP pages"? I hope that nobody expected it to optimize SQL-queries :D

@bergie it has a limited subset of extensions and you can't directly use arbitary extensions with it. those should be rewritten.

Ilia Alshanetsky wrote a nice article

I've never used eval() for anything. In fact, I don't even know what it does :)

in php-5.2 eval() and create_function() are pretty much your only choices if you need to do some code-generation. in php-5.3+ there are closures which give a better, stricter way to do it.

But… HipHop is limited to 5.2 for now (they are working on adding 5.3 features)

Until now, I've understood that it's generally more efficient to make complicated SQL queries and simple PHP filtering etc. to the result set. I wonder if HipHop manages to turn that over so that in the future it's a good idea to make simple SQL queries and modify the result set mostly with PHP.

@indeyets Ah, I see. Thanks. :)

@TomiS it will still need complicated queries. The application should never do something that the database is good at. Even in compiled languages you need efficient queries.

@smallone In the perfect word it would be that way. But...

@mtarvainen yeah i know the world is far from perfect ..i have to rewrite parts of an php application next month that has select * and tons of pregex stuff in it.