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Date: Mon, 13 May 2019 15:17:28 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Proposal for a RFC
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

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On Mon, 13 May 2019 at 14:46, Steven Wade <stevenwadejr@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Hi all, I wanted to re-ping the list to see if there is any more feedback
> on this proposal? Any technical concerns or true BC changes?
>


I'm personally unconvinced of the value of this, and would probably propose
it was blocked by coding standards in my team if it was added, because its
meaning is so ambiguous.

I actually see quite a lot of classes with normal methods called things
like "toArray", and my comment is always "to *what* array?" Most objects do
not have a single "natural"/"canonical" array representation, and such a
transform is usually actually used as part of some particular helper or
code pattern - e.g. an intermediate form for serializing to XML/JSON, or a
compatibility-wrapper for legacy code. There's nearly always a better name
for the method that properly indicates its intent.

As a thought experiment, imagine a similar method which allowed you to
overload (object)$foo. Although (array)$foo tells you slightly more than
that, I'm not convinced it tells you enough that you're not just hiding
meaning behind cute syntax.

JsonSerializable actually suffers from similar problems, and is IMO useful
only because it's automatically recursive. I presume the proposed mechanism
would not be, i.e. return [$foo] would not be interpreted as return
[(array)$foo].

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]

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