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Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2021 11:27:02 +0200
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Subject: Proposal: Shorthand initialization and destructuring of associative arrays
From: konrad@baumgart.pl (Konrad Baumgart)

Hi everyone,

I'd like to propose 2 syntactic sugars:
$array =3D [ =3D> $data]; // the same as $array =3D ['data' =3D> $data]
and
[ =3D> $data] =3D $array; // the same as ['data' =3D> $data] =3D $array

My biggest use-case for this would be conveniently returning multiple
things from a function, like:

function getDataForDashboard() {
  =E2=80=A6
  return [ =3D> $dailyAggregations, =3D> $weeklyAggregations];
}

[ =3D> $dailyAggregations, =3D> $weeklyAggregations] =3D getDataForDashboar=
d();

Similar effects can be achieved with compact()/extract() functions,
but I dislike those functions because they make it hard to find usages
of variables. Using numerical arrays instead makes the code less
readable and more error-prone for me. Using ['dailyAggregations' =3D>
$dailyAggregations,=E2=80=A6] would force you to split code into multiple
lines and negatively affect readability.

I was recently developing with js/ts and I liked the ease of returning
multiple items from a function as an object, while still preserving
their name.

I have spare time this October, so I would happily get into php
interpreter by developing this.

I'm looking forward for your feedback,
Konrad Baumgart