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Date: Wed, 20 May 2020 14:00:25 +0100
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To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Draft RFC callable types + callable type/function autoloading
From: Danack@basereality.com (Dan Ackroyd)

Hi internals,

A while ago, I spent some time thinking about callables, and how they
are not very consistent, which makes people sad:
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/consistent_callables

The reason I didn't pursue that RFC is that although tidying up PHP
core to be more consistent would be nice, it would be a large amount
of work, that wouldn't dramatically improve the developer experience
when programming in PHP. In fact it would mostly just break otherwise
working code.

What would be better would be an RFC to make callables be more useful,
specifically by allowing you to define the parameter and return types
for them. Making it possible to autoload those types would be
required, and function autoloading is also a feature that has been
desired for a while.

So here are two draft RFCs:

Callable types
https://github.com/Danack/FunctionTypes/blob/master/1_callable_type_rfc.md

Function + callable type autoloading
https://github.com/Danack/FunctionTypes/blob/master/2_autoloading_part_2.md

I'll leave them on github for the moment, as it is easier to do PRs
and track issues there but I wanted to gather initial feedback before
getting closer to the RFC cutoff date.

I'll move them to the wiki and formally submit them for discussion
when the implementation is closer to being done.

cheers
Dan
Ack