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Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2020 15:53:18 -0500
To: "php internals" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Short-function syntax
From: larry@garfieldtech.com ("Larry Garfield")

On Tue, Oct 20, 2020, at 1:19 PM, Larry Garfield wrote:
> A while back, Nikita mentioned that it should now be easy to offer an 
> abbreviated syntax for functions that are just a single expression.  I 
> decided to take a crack at it and it turns out he was right.  I thus 
> offer this RFC:
> 
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/short-functions
> 
> Hopefully I made a decent enough case for it.  It's entirely a 
> convenience factor, but I think for many OOP cases (getter methods and 
> factored out operations) and functional cases (where functions should 
> generally be a single expression conceptually) it does make the code 
> nicer, more compact, and more readable.
> 
> *dons flame retardant suit*

There's been some discussion on the PR that I'm looping back here for completeness, mainly about using "function" vs "fn" for short named functions.

I can see good arguments for either, and in the end don't care all that much.  My main concern was that `function` was easier to implement, but Sara graciously offered an alternate patch that uses `fn` instead.  I'll make a PR out of that sometime later today.  If we feel it's highly bikeshedable I'm happy to make that a secondary vote, or if a clear consensus emerges either way before then we can go with whatever that is.  

I think I moderately prefer `function` for visual consistency, especially inside a class, but it's not a hill I feel like being moderately injured on. :-)

--Larry Garfield