Is it acceptable to wrap PHP library functions solely to change the names?

Question

I'm going to be starting a fairly large PHP application this summer, on which I'll be the sole developer (so I don't have any coding conventions to conform to aside from my own).

PHP 5.3 is a decent language IMO, despite the stupid namespace token. But one thing that has always bothered me about it is the standard library and its lack of a naming convention.

So I'm curious, would it be seriously bad practice to wrap some of the most common standard library functions in my own functions/classes to make the names a little better? I suppose it could also add or modify some functionality in some cases, although at the moment I don't have any examples (I figure I will find ways to make them OO or make them work a little differently while I am working).

If you saw a PHP developer do this, would you think "Man, this is one shoddy developer?"

Additionally, I don't know much (or anything) about if/how PHP is optimized, and I know that usually PHP performace doesn't matter. But would doing something like this have a noticeable impact on the performance of my application?

Answer 1

You might be the only developer now but will someone else ever pick up this code? If so you really should stick mainly to the standard library names if you're doing nothing more than simply wrapping the call.

I've worked with code where the author has wrapped calls like this and it really does harm the ability to quickly understand the code

If you saw a PHP developer do this, would you think "Man, this is one shoddy developer?"

Well no...but I'd think "Damn...I've got to learn this guys new naming standard which although well-intentioned will take me time"