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Date: Thu, 25 Feb 2021 17:34:20 -0600
To: "php internals" <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Inline conditional that returns null if falsy
From: larry@garfieldtech.com ("Larry Garfield")

On Thu, Feb 25, 2021, at 2:55 AM, Rowan Tommins wrote:
> On 24/02/2021 04:26, Mike Schinkel wrote:
> > Repeating code similar to that from the message sent by David Rodrigues you can see that eliminating the ": null" is less noisy:
> >
> >      <div class="user <?php user ? 'online' : null ?>">...</div>
> >      <div class="user <?php user ? 'online' ?>">...</div>
> 
> 
> That's an interesting use case. Of course, the logical default there is 
> actually '' (empty string) rather than null, since "echo null;" doesn't 
> actually make much sense, but null works under current type juggling rules.
> 
> Then again, perhaps this is a good example of why PHP *isn't* the best 
> choice any more if you want a templating language. Twig, for instance, 
> has exactly this facility 
> [https://twig.symfony.com/doc/3.x/templates.html#other-operators]:

Given the security implications of plain PHP templating (you're on your own for absolutely all filtering and escaping, good luck), I'd say this isn't even a controversial statement.  PHP may have begun life as a templating language for the 90s, but in the 2020s it's a fairly mediocre option at best compared to what else is readily available.

--Larry Garfield