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Date: Wed, 26 May 2021 09:09:07 -0500
To: "php internals" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Consensus Gathering: is_initialized
From: larry@garfieldtech.com ("Larry Garfield")

On Wed, May 26, 2021, at 8:24 AM, Rowan Tommins wrote:
> On 26/05/2021 11:13, Joe Watkins wrote:
> > Hi internals,
> >
> > In response to: https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=78480
> >
> > I implemented: https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/7029
> 
> 
> My general feeling remains that the "uninitialized" state is an awkward 
> hack that we should be working to eliminate with better constructor 
> semantics. A variable that remains uninitialised after the constructor 
> almost always indicates a bug in the constructor, not a state that the 
> rest of the application should care about.

I am inclined to agree here.  What I don't know about is the cases noted in the bug, such as GraphQL or other serialization cases where "null" and "absent" are not quite the same thing.  That is probably sufficiently edge-case to not deal with directly, especially when the more verbose alternative still exists, but that's the only reason I'd even consider making uninitialized something other than "your constructor is bad and you should feel bad."

--Larry Garfield