PHP reserved words as namespaces and class names

Question

Recently I've started converting my framework to use the php namespaces and one question to which I can't seem to find the answer is - is it 'legal' to use reserved words such as 'Object', 'Array', 'String' as namespace and class name within that namespace? An example would be:

namespace System\Object;


class String { }

class Array { }

Answer 1

PHP will throw an error like:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_ARRAY, expecting T_STRING

if you try:

class Array
{

}
$myClass = new Array;

Instead, try something like

class myArray
{

}
$myClass = new myArray;

[edit] I'll elaborate on that a little, they're reserved for a reason because in the first scenario above, PHP wouldn't be able to tell the difference between you defining an array or initialising a class of the same name, so it throws an error. There's no way round this like in MySQL, for example, where you can escape reserved words with a backtick. So in PHP you're forced to change the name, you don't have to change it much, one char will do as long as you're not using the exact same name as a reserved word.

Hope that helps!