Newsgroups: php.internals
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Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2019 20:52:03 -0700
Message-ID: <CAJVEVObtRNX_1VWtd35bKKYm_Z9RY=kgx78VY3T3cuFhWMR=5g@mail.gmail.com>
To: internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Silent Types
From: fwentish@gmail.com (Fwentish Aelondes)

Hello internals,

Zeev's idea to bring peace to the galaxy seems like a good idea, but
impossible to implement in practice.

But it got me thinking about how one might introduce static typing
into a dynamically typed language w/out breaking BC.

And then I had this crazy idea:

//int
$i = 0;

//string
$c = 'c';

//float
$pi = 3.14;

If static typing in php was *only* an opt-in kind-of-thing, would this
work? Could the parser be built to identify 3 or 4 different keywords
in comments and give warnings or fatal errors for type conversions of
variables that have the type specified in the immediately preceding
comment?

Just a (crazy) idea.

---- Fwentish