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Date: Mon, 13 Jul 2020 13:08:16 +0200
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To: Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP Internals List <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC][DISCUSSION] Language Constructs Syntax Changes
From: michal.brzuchalski@gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Micha=C5=82_Marcin_Brzuchalski?=)

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Hi Nikita,

pon., 13 lip 2020 o 12:41 Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> napisa=C5=82(=
a):

> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 9:36 AM Micha=C5=82 Marcin Brzuchalski <
> michal.brzuchalski@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi internals,
>>
>> I realise we're tight to the deadline but from my calculations,
>> this RFC should fit with 2w discussion and 2w voting before feature
>> freeze.
>>
>> The proposal is to allow two statements to skip parentheses so they don'=
t
>> look like expressions.
>> This goes to `declare` and `__halt_compiler`.
>> Changes have already been implemented and respective PR's are linked to
>> the
>> RFC.
>>
>> You can find the RFC at
>> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/language-constructs-syntax-changes
>>
>> There is no BC break!
>> Proposed changes only allow certain constructs to be considered valid.
>>
>
> I don't think introducing alternative syntax for declare and halt_compile=
r
> is a good idea. It introduces two ways to write the same thing, without
> much benefit I can see.
>
> Your stated goal is to make it clearer that these aren't functions, but
> language constructs. I'm not sure your change helps that much: While
> "__halt_compiler()" looks like a function call, "__halt_compiler" looks
> like a constant lookup. For the declare syntax, "declare(a =3D 1)" is alr=
eady
> illegal syntax for functions, even with the parentheses.
>

I can agree with "__halt_compiler;" similar to constant lookup, which
indeed does not mate it more clear.

Regarding the second syntax for "declare" what I wanted to achieve is
reduce the number of different syntaxes and we do have quite a few in PHP.
I've noticed that the "declare" syntax is quite similar to the const
declare if you simply remove parentheses,
which therefore IMO increases readability, consider this example:

declare strict_types =3D 1;
const GEAR_LIMIT =3D 5;

From parser perspective, these both use const_list and only differ by a
first keyword and looks similar and present the same syntax construct.
Which currently is not true and they're both presented as a different
syntax.

By introducing an alternative syntax I planned to deprecate the old as soon
as we could potentially do that.
I believe it'd be hard until we have ticks directive.

Cheers,
--
Micha=C5=82 Marcin Brzuchalski

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