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Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2019 14:47:21 +0200
Message-ID: <CANZOY=ALWSeM3mLPrpctQ-87LOGROyxFtAyRUpS18+Dd+Z-z1A@mail.gmail.com>
To: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Strict operators directive
From: arnold.adaniels.nl@gmail.com (Arnold Daniels)

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On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 1:18 PM Alain D D Williams <addw@phcomp.co.uk>
wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 12:00:18PM +0100, Rowan Collins wrote:
>
> > Perl is a notable contrast: the types of operands are deduced based on
> the
> > operator, but there are different operators to force them to different
> > types. So `23 < 4` and `"23" < "4"` are both numeric comparisons, so
> return
> > false; but `23 lt 4` and `"23" lt "4"` do string comparisons, and return
> > true. That way the user's intent is clear, but you don't have to manually
> > cast values or remember how different combinations will be interpreted.
>
> IMHO the Perl way is better: the different operators mean that I will get
> what I
> want, I don't need to worry about an accidental type juggle; it is also
> (presumably) faster as the run time does not need to: look at a string,
> decide
> if it could be a number and maybe change what it does.
>
> The big problem is backwards compatibility, so new operators would be
> needed:
>
> string compare: lt, gt, etc, not much of a problem
>
> numeric compare: #< #> would be nice were it not that # means comment.
>
>
>
Note that using a directive means there is no inherit backward
compatibility issue. We're talking about copy/pasted code sniplets only.

Solving the issues presented, maintaining BC, without the use of a
directive would require the addition of multiple type-specific operators.
String compare, numeric compare, array compare, etc, etc. PHP code would
become unrecognizable. I'm not a fan of that alternative.

Arnold

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