On: PHP 8.2.4

[throw_m239339]

> The current solution for code reuse (use longer class names to avoid clashes, we help you with syntactic sugar called "namespaces") is the wrong approach imo.

You can in theory create modules with require.

module.php

    <?php 
    return (function(){
        $foo = function(){echo "hello from PHP";};
        return [
          "greet"=>$foo
        ];
    })();

script.php

    <?php 
    $module = require('./module.php');
    $module["greet"]();

But PHP namespaces and autoloading via composer ARE the community accepted way to handle namespacing. The ecosystem is so large developers aren't going to move to a different module system at that point. Especially when composer is the defacto package manager for PHP.

[tored → throw_m239339]

Namespaces and modules are orthogonal, you can support both like Typescript.

Your solution works, but unfortunately not something that has any community support. I proposed something similar a year ago but use classes instead because classes seems to be the internal building block in PHP.

For both our solutions is would relatively easy to add a shim to older PHP versions.

module.php

    <?php
    
    return new class {
        public const MY_CONST = 47;

        private const MY_PRIVATE_CONST = 127;
    
        // with PHP 8.1 you also have readonly properties
        public string $myPublic = 'foo';
    
        private int $myPrivate = 17;
    
        public function helloWorld(string $name): void
        {
            echo "Hello, World {$name}!";
        }
    };

main.php

    <?php
    
    final class ModuleException extends Exception {
    }
    
    function module(string $name): object
    {
        static $modules = [];
    
        if (isset($modules[$name])) {
            return $modules[$name];
        }
    
        try {
            $module = @require $name;
        } catch (Error $error) {
            throw new ModuleException("No such module {$name}", 0, $error);
        }
    
        if (!is_object($module)) {
            throw new ModuleException("Module {$name} is not an object");
        }
    
        $modules[$name] = $module;
        return $module;
    }
    
    $my = module('module.php');
    $my->helloWorld('Module system');
    
    $other = module('module.php');
    assert($my === $other);
    

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30242974