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To: Christian Schneider <cschneid@cschneid.com>,
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Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2018 22:51:33 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Shorthand proposal for associative arrays
From: php@fleshgrinder.com (Fleshgrinder)

On 1/26/2018 7:16 PM, Christian Schneider wrote:
> Hi there,
> I have a proposal for a shorthand notation of associative arrays borrowed from another language:
> 	:$foo
> would be equivalent to
> 	'foo' => $foo
> and would work with array, list or []
> 
> Motivation behind it, maybe someone else finds more good uses:
> 
> 1) Emulating named parameters with associative arrays like
> 	html::img([ 'src' => $src, 'alt' => $alt ]);
>    could be written as
> 	html::img([ :$src, :$alt ]);
>    which encourages consistent naming of variables and parameters
> 
> 2) Simplifying list destructuring with non-integer keys, example taking from http://php.net/manual/en/migration71.new-features.php#migration71.new-features.support-for-keys-in-list
> 	foreach ($data as ["id" => $id, "name" => $name]) {
>    becomes
> 	foreach ($data as [ :$id, :$name ]) {
>    which reduces redundancy.
> 
> I implemented a minimal patch (2 lines are added to the parser) to implement this which you can find at
> 	https://cschneid.com/php/php7_2/assoc_array_shorthand.patch
> 
> What do you think, is this worth an RFC? I hope I didn't miss an existing one :-)
> 
> Regards,
> - Chris
> 
> 

Hi Chris!

I really like this proposal. `compact` is cumbersome to use, or lets
say, almost impossible without an intelligent IDE. However, what is more
important is the fact that is would allow for a very readable and usable
approach for destructuring of associative arrays (as illustrated by your
example) which is very, very neat. The change is also extremely minimal
which speaks for it.

I would support you in writing up an RFC for this (if desired).

-- 
Richard "Fleshgrinder" Fussenegger