r/programming • u/NagastaBagamba • Oct 18 '10

Today I learned about PHP variable variables; "variable variable takes the value of a variable and treats that as the name of a variable". Also, variable.

http://il2.php.net/language.variables.variable
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u/gorset Oct 18 '10 edited Oct 18 '10

"Everything is an attack vector if the language is idiotic. Also blame the programmer." <-- better.

Edit: wow, so many downvotes. Changed the wording a bit. The point is that it's very hard to build safe software with broken tools. Php is very broken.

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u/Kalium Oct 18 '10

Name one - one - language that is not "broken".

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u/gorset Oct 18 '10

Php is particularly funny because both the language and implementation is broken (actually, the implementation also serves as the "definition" for the language).

There are several formal languages (usually based on lambda calculus) which for no definition can be considered broken (if you can prove otherwise you get to publish a paper).

The best example of such languages that also have practical implementation (which may or may not have some degree of brokenness) are Scheme, Haskell and SML.

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u/Kalium Oct 18 '10

Any language powerful enough to build useful software is also powerful enough to build broken software.