4. Testing

Testing is a software development method to increase software quality. There are several distinct types of testing which vary in granularity and purpose:

• Unit Testing: A test that validates an individual unit of source code, usually a function or a method.
• Integration Testing: A test in which a combination of components are tested together to ensure they are working well as a group. Preferably participating components are unit-tested.
• Acceptance Testing: A test in which a software system is tested as a whole. Acceptance testing declares the standards to which a software system is considered to be working (= accepted).

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There has been some discussion on the PHP internals list on adding a short syntax array seen in other languages. The short syntax array defines an array directly with the array operator brackets:

 
$array = array(1,4,array(5,9),array(3,'name')); // Old way
$array = [1,4,[5,9],[3,'name']]; // Shorter syntax
 

The shorter syntax is both more readable and more welcoming to programmers coming from other languages. I read about this on Brian Moon's blog, and among one of the comments I read an interesting thought:

Yes, would be a nice addition. Though I’d rather the anonymous object syntax came too, would be much more useful, with callbacks etc.
visit({ function accept() { … } });

I think the commentator was actually referring to anonymous functions (which are objects in Javascript). If PHP implemented anonymous functions (and maybe closures?) it would become very powerful (callbacks anyone?), sort of like Javascript with real class based OO. Food for thought.