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Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2020 12:48:12 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Shorter Attribute Syntax Change RFC 0.2
From: a.leathley@gmx.net (Andreas Leathley)

As a possible addition/discussion point, I only noticed today that @{}
is a syntax that has not been mentioned yet, also not in any previous
discussions about attributes as far as I can tell. @{} currently leads
to a syntax error, so there is no BC break, and {} is common syntax for
grouping expressions in PHP, much more so than [], which is an
array-specific syntax.

Would it be a possibility to keep @@ and add @{} as a second syntax for
attributes, that can be used for grouping (for situations where that
makes sense) or other possibly future extensions? Then @@ would be a
good syntax for simple attribute definitions, and @{} could be an
alternative for people who want to group them or if any more complex
attribute features are added to the language later.

Because both sides of the "ending delimiter or no ending delimiter"
discussion do have some points in their favor, and it seems quite
individual what each person prefers. For a language it could be
beneficial to give some choices to the developer instead of foreseeing
each individual use case, and maybe attributes is such a feature.

I previously thought about suggesting both types of syntax (with and
without delimiters), but felt the current options all have too many side
effects to choose "two side effects" or two BC breaks. But the @@ BC
break seems the most harmless BC break of the bunch, and @{} does not
have a BC break, so these two option might be good together.