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In-Reply-To: <CAGBsUrfZcOUJBeTGMHMN7XbU5421+RhRtEs41hgnT1mX-pm=4w@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 25 May 2021 14:47:33 -0500
Message-ID: <CAESVnVrehOW5ufq-L9nqNYTQiFuY8SkU4CkrtpSmVwVEX5Nr=w@mail.gmail.com>
To: Kamil Tekiela <tekiela246@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Disable autovivification on false
From: pollita@php.net (Sara Golemon)

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On Tue, May 25, 2021 at 11:23 AM Kamil Tekiela <tekiela246@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'd like to start a discussion on the following RFC
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/autovivification_false
> Particularly, I am looking for opinions on whether this behaviour should be
> left alone, should be disabled on false, or should be disabled on null and
> false, and left only for undefined variables.
>
> Autovivification is very useful in PHP, especially with multidimensional
> arrays and loops. However, the question is should we allow it on false and
> null values going forward.
>
>
I agree it's useful, and should 100% not be killed on undef.  There is
doubtless a mountain of code in WordPress plugins alone which relies on
this, not to mention other frameworks and libraries.

As for `false` and `null`, I think it's reasonable to kill these (with a
deprecation period) in a major version (e.g. 9.0).  It might also be
reasonable to only kill this behavior when strict_types is enabled.
Essentially it would enforce making the array type accessors strict about
operating on arrays.  Would still need a deprecation period to go with
that, but it would be less-rough on migrations of legacy codebases.

-Sara

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