Question

I’m jealous of Ruby with their use of “new” as a method. Is it possible to achieve this in PHP 5.3 with the use of namespaces?

class Foo
{
     public function new()
     {
         echo 'Hello';
     }
}

Answer 1

No. Like already pointed out elsewhere, new is a reserved keyword. Trying to use it as a method name will result in a Parse error: “syntax error, unexpected T_NEW, expecting T_STRING“. Namespaces will not help, because the new keyword applies to any namespace. The only way around this would be by means of a virtual method, e.g.

/**
 * @method String new new($args) returns $args
 */
class Foo
{
     protected function _new($args)
     {
         return $args;
     }
     public function __call($method, $args)
     {
         if($method === 'new') {
             return call_user_func_array(array($this, '_new'), $args);
         } else {
             throw new LogicException('Unknown method');
         }
     }
}
$foo = new Foo;
echo $foo->new('hello'); // return hello
echo $foo->boo();        // throws Exception

But I would discourage this. All magic methods are slower than direct invocation of methods and if the simple rule is there may be no method name new, then just be it. Use a synonym.