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Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2020 20:42:58 -0500
Cc: Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>,
 PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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To: Mike Schinkel <mike@newclarity.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Typed array properties V2
From: jbafford@zort.net (John Bafford)



> On Jan 19, 2020, at 19:53, Mike Schinkel <mike@newclarity.net> wrote:
>=20
> P.S.  There was also the mention by Levi Morrison that the type[] =
syntax was a poor one because of ambiguity between (?int)[] or ?(int[]). =
 I would argue that the latter would likely occur orders of magnitude =
more often than the former, so I would argue that ?int[] should =
interpret as ?(int[]), and if they want (?int)[] then the developer =
should use parentheses.

As a thought, perhaps the syntax '[Type]' for an array of Type. That =
way, you could write ?[int], or [?int], or even ?[?int] and there would =
be no ambiguity, and no need for parentheses since the array brackets =
would serve that purpose.

If we also wanted to allow typing array keys, this syntax could be =
extended to [string : Type] and [int: Type], and it would continue to =
remain unambiguous, even with nested arrays, and with using a more =
similar syntax than the docblock syntax array<string, Type>. (It might =
also be reasonable to support both variants as aliases of each other.)

Both of these are the syntax Swift uses for arrays and dictionaries, so =
the syntax has precedence from another language. Swift also supports =
both syntaxes as described above ([KeyType : ValueType] is exactly the =
same as Dictionary<KeyType, ValueType>), but the shorter bracket syntax =
is preferred for readability.

-John