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Date: Mon, 4 Oct 2021 11:37:44 +0200
Message-ID: <CAF+90c-FwJo+hYGapSZB-=OOH+Kg-Nk7vtLT3JouR-NNBK8fEg@mail.gmail.com>
To: Konrad Baumgart <konrad@baumgart.pl>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0000000000003565d405cd83ab7d"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal: Shorthand initialization and destructuring of
 associative arrays
From: nikita.ppv@gmail.com (Nikita Popov)

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On Mon, Sep 27, 2021 at 11:27 AM Konrad Baumgart <konrad@baumgart.pl> wrote=
:

> 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 getDataForDashbo=
ard();
>
> 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
>

I'm generally in favor of this functionality. Unfortunately the syntax
options we have for this are not as nice as in other languages. [=3D> $x] i=
s
probably the most reasonable choice where array literals are concerned.
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/named_params#shorthand_syntax_for_matching_paramet=
er_and_variable_name
also has some thoughts on this topic, as named params have the same problem=
.

Regards,
Nikita

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