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Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2019 15:53:39 +0000
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To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Deprecate short_open_tag ini directive?
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

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On Tue, 12 Mar 2019 at 13:28, G. P. B. <george.banyard@gmail.com> wrote:

> I was more going along the lines of removing short tags altogether with the
> ini setting as they are not available out of the box except if you use a
> special compile flag.
>


I don't really follow this reasoning: if we removed every feature which
wasn't enabled out of the box, we wouldn't need an INI file at all.

The question has to be whether including the option to turn this on is
still useful to people.



> However, I didn't know they were used with template
> engines but wouldn't they just use `<?=` which is always available?
>


No, as shown in my previous example, I've seen people use short-tags for
logic, like <? if($foo): ?>  some HTML <? endif; ?>



> I mean I don't really have any strong opinions about it. It just seems a
> bit odd considering we removed ASP tags in, IIRC, PHP 7.
>


ASP tags were removed because they were very rarely used, and most people
probably didn't even know they existed. Short tags, in contrast, are
actually *older* than the full "<?php" tag, and were at one time extremely
common.

Again, it's possible that in the years since this was last discussed that
their usage has declined, but as with so many existing features, it's hard
to know who is still relying on it, particularly in private code, so we
should be very cautious of "just tidying up".

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]

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