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Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2018 15:53:45 +0200
Message-ID: <CAPhkiZxmcMabwcxDMn9jV-f0veBW8_4=Mq9PiKY4x3fuzkOA8A@mail.gmail.com>
To: CHU Zhaowei <me@jhdxr.com>
Cc: Wes <netmo.php@gmail.com>, PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV][RFC][DISCUSSION] Deprecate the backtick operator
From: narf@devilix.net (Andrey Andreev)

Hi,

On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 3:16 PM, CHU Zhaowei <me@jhdxr.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
>>But that being said, I do support the proposal. I understand people
>>opposed to removing features for no reason, but nobody needs this to
>>be an operator, it's not a widely-used one, and we all know if it was
>>proposed for addition today it would have 0 chance of acceptance.
>
> How do you conclude that this is not a widely-used one?
>

Running shell commands in itself is not a common task, and I've only
seen the backtick operator in 10-year old spaghetti code.

> btw, you already hit the most important point. Why do we deprecate or remove
> feature for no good?
>

You say it's "no good" because its existence doesn't create a problem
in an obvious way, but by that logic we shouldn't ever touch anything
that doesn't wreak havoc - I don't agree with that.

We're not talking about a function that satisfies a very common need
and/or has no alternative. We're talking about an operator that 100%
replicates an existing function, without providing any benefits over
it (on the contrary, using the function makes the code more easily
understandable) and is thus built into the language itself for
practically no reason.

Cheers,
Andrey.