Newsgroups: php.internals Path: news.php.net Xref: news.php.net php.internals:111143 Return-Path: Delivered-To: mailing list internals@lists.php.net Received: (qmail 56805 invoked from network); 23 Jul 2020 07:32:04 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO localhost.localdomain) (76.75.200.58) by pb1.pair.com with SMTP; 23 Jul 2020 07:32:04 -0000 To: internals@lists.php.net References: Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 07:26:41 +0100 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.10.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Language: en-GB Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Posted-By: 87.81.129.66 Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] The @@ is terrible, are we sure we're OK with it? From: marandall@php.net (Mark Randall) Message-ID: On 23/07/2020 02:00, Sara Golemon wrote: > Regards the vote; I don't believe that @@ has been proven unworkable, > however if I'm wrong about that, then the second choice selection from the > last vote would obviously take precedence. I don't believe the concern is that we have something unworkable sitting in front of us right now, after all if that were the case we would not be needing to have this conversation as the RFC would already have been rendered void. What we do have, is a deep sense of unease that we collectively made the wrong decision, based on, in part, incomplete information. While the initial block to @@ has been remedied by a larger language-level change, that the problem existed at all provided a clear example of the widely unforeseen challenges associated with the @@ syntax and its lack of closing tags, and focused renewed attention on long-term consequences which where perhaps not given enough consideration during the vote. There has been one occurrence already, there will likely be more in the future. But what specifically will they be and how severe? We likely will not know until they happen. But what we can say with reasonable confidence is we have an option on the table that is technically superior, has an implementation ready to go, and that will significantly allay the fears of many in internals who feel that the @@attributes syntax poses an unnecessary risk of burdening future development. Lets' not commit ourselves to 20+ years of supporting a syntax that we already have strong reservations about before it's even out the door. Mark Randall marandall@php.net