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Date: Fri, 1 May 2020 00:43:23 +0100
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To: Lynn <kjarli@gmail.com>
Cc: Bob Weinand <bobwei9@hotmail.com>, PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Mixed type
From: Danack@basereality.com (Dan Ackroyd)

Bob Weinand wrote:
> Mixed is a hack, do not use mixed.
> ...
> As such the introduction of mixed is pretty much necessary.
> I'm actually in favor of introducing it.

Matthew Brown wrote:
> I'm opposed to the use mixed in codebases ...
> A type system without an explicit mixed type feels incomplete to me.

'I am agree with all'.

Mixed is a vital thing....that should be used as little as possible.

Marco Pivetta wrote:
> I think making `mixed` very painful to write may be a big advantage.

Everything is a tradeoff, and I think one of the things that PHP does
well right is allowing people to choose their own tradeoffs, rather
than having a "one true way" of doing things in PHP.

Exceptions, eval(), annotations/attributes, and the mixed type are all
things that have a vital place, even though they can be used
inappropriately.

Making something like this painful to use seems a bad choice. It's
different from things like json_last_error() or preg_last_error()
where doing the easier thing (of not checking those) is always the
wrong thing.

In particular for people like:

Lynn wrote:
> I maintain lots of legacy code and I cannot add
> return types despite being truly mixed. Mixed is not a
> hack, it's a scenario that frequently happens.

making things more painful for people maintaining legacy code seems
like definitely a bad choice.

Gabriel Caruso wrote:
> Has the type `any` been considered?

Yes. I think mixed is the better choice for now.

There's just so much widespread use of 'mixed' in PHP core,
extensions, documentation and userland code that even if 'any' were a
slightly better choice long term, taking a choice that would probably
be multiple years before it paid off it's cost, seems bad.

Ilija Tovilo wrote:
> One note: I was wondering if the following
> code throws an error (it does):

Thanks, updated the RFC.

cheers
Dan
Ack