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Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2020 19:40:12 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC][Proposal] Renamed parameters
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Tommins)

Hi Andreas,


On 27/07/2020 00:41, Andreas Hennings wrote:
> 1. Calls with named arguments can only happen on:
>    - explicitly named functions (e.g. no call_user_func()).
>    - constructor calls with an explicitly named class.
>    - object methods, if the object variable is type-hinted or a type is
> known at compile time.
> 2. Named arguments in calls are converted to number-indexed arguments at
> compile time.
> 3. Parameter name lookup is done based on the type-hinted class or
> interface. Parameter names on the actual object are ignored.


While this is an interesting concept in general, it introduces a much 
larger change to the semantics of the language than seems justified for 
this particular problem - it would effectively require introducing an 
element of "static typing" into the language.

By "static typing", I mean this:

 > variables have an intrinsic type, and the same value can behave 
differently depending on the type of variable that holds it

Which could be contrasted with "dynamic typing" like this:

 > values have an intrinsic type, and operations will be selected based 
on those values, regardless of which variables hold them

Although we have various type annotations in the language now, they are 
all just restrictions on the types of value a variable can hold; they 
don't change the behaviour of that value. With this proposal, these two 
function would potentially do different things when given the exact same 
argument:

function a(FooInterface $arg) { $arg->doSomething(namedparam: 42); }
function b(BarInterface $arg) { $arg->doSomething(namedparam: 42); }


Static typing of that sort is a useful feature of other languages, and 
there are people who'd love to see PHP go that way, but it's not 
something we should bolt on in a hurry just to solve an issue with named 
parameters.


Regards,

-- 
Rowan Tommins (né Collins)
[IMSoP]