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Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2020 23:07:40 +0100
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Subject: Re: semicolon terminator for switch cases
From: ajf@ajf.me (Andrea Faulds)
Message-ID: <php.internals-109364@news.php.net>

Hi Ilija,

Ilija Tovilo wrote:
> Looking through the language grammer I discovered that switch cases can also be terminated with a `;` instead of a `:`.
> 
> ```
> switch ($i) {
>      case 1;
>          return 1;
>      default;
>          return 2;
> }
> ```
> 
> https://3v4l.org/o7nD8
> 
> This is in fact documented:
> https://www.php.net/manual/en/control-structures.switch.php
> 
> What's the reasoning behind this? I find it weird an inconsistent.

For whatever reason, I somehow remember that this dates to at least 
PHP/FI 2.0, which means it's as least as old as me (24 years… no, I was 
not involved with PHP back then ;). And indeed, the case statement is 
mentioned in the manual (https://www.php.net/manual/phpfi2.php#lang), 
with an example to be found in 
https://museum.php.net/php2/php-2.0.tar.gz under php-2.0/test/lang/003.tst:

     --TEST--
     Simple Switch Test                                            ...
     --POST--
     --GET--
     --FILE--
     <?$a=1;
       switch($a);
         case 0;
             echo "bad";
             break;
         case 1;
             echo "good";
             break;
         default;
             echo "bad";
             break;
       endswitch>
     --EXPECT--
     Content-type: text/html
     good

Being able to use a colon instead of a semicolon here is, I guess, a 
more modern thing. Was it PHP 3 or PHP 4 that changed this? Who knows.

I don't think it's hurting anyone as it is… can we leave it in peace? :)

Thanks,
Andrea