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Date: Wed, 29 Jul 2020 13:49:28 -0300
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To: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Allow two words keywords
From: david.proweb@gmail.com (David Rodrigues)

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Hello!

I do not know if there is some consensus about "why not use two words as a
single keyword" in programming language in general, but I really found a
few examples of it, as in SQL with "GROUP BY", for instance.

So I question if it could be used on PHP to expand the keywords repertoire
by mixing two words without causes BC.

I will use the Attribute syntax-war to exemplify.

I really prefer to create a new keyword "attr()" or "attribute()" to make
attributes possible. It basically uses the same function-like with
arguments to work. But it invariably will cause BC to old codes that use
attr or attribute names (eg. "function attr()").

But, if we create a new two-words keyword like "using attr()", maybe it
will not cause any BC, because "function using attr()" is impossible, but
"using attr(X) function attr()" will do.

I do not know if I am being high with peanuts, but maybe it could be
considered to this discussion and make possible new features on PHP without
creating strange symbols like @@ or #[] that will requires that new users
check the documentation about "what it mean", while is very hard to Google
symbols (so search will be "what mean double at in PHP" or "what mean
hashtag brackets").


Atenciosamente,
David Rodrigues

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