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Date: Sat, 28 May 2022 03:35:50 +0100
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To: Jordan LeDoux <jordan.ledoux@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] NULL Coercion Consistency
From: craig@craigfrancis.co.uk (Craig Francis)

On 27 May 2022, at 07:44, Jordan LeDoux <jordan.ledoux@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 26, 2022 at 5:21 AM Craig Francis =
<craig@craigfrancis.co.uk> wrote:
>> It sounds like you got lucky - you have a function that has a problem =
with NULL (but I assume it's fine with an empty string?), and during =
your testing you happened to pass NULL to this function. As noted =
before, static analysis is *considerably* better at these types of =
checks, because it's able check if variables *can* contain NULL. They =
can also perform other checks as well (important when your code seems to =
care about NULL vs an empty string).
>=20
>=20
> Nearly *all* code has a problem with null.


Erm, but it doesn't... does it?

I know I keep going on about this very simply example, but it represents =
a fairly typical style of programming PHP, and I just do not understand =
what the problem with it is:

```
$search =3D $request->input('q'); // Laravel, returns NULL when 'q' is =
not defined.

echo 'Results for ' . htmlspecialchars($search);
```

But forget about it, hopefully someone else can find a solution to the =
problem.



On 27 May 2022, at 07:44, Jordan LeDoux <jordan.ledoux@gmail.com> wrote:
> It very much feels like the original effort to deprecate null calls =
decided to resolve this by saying "let's have the language help =
developers improve their code so it doesn't have these problems in the =
first place", and this effort is trying to resolve this by saying "let's =
have the language support the buggy code in ways that makes it work".
>=20
> At my job, my task for the last three weeks has literally been =
upgrading our internal codebase for 8.1, and the biggest set of logs I'm =
dealing with is exactly what you're talking about here: null's passed to =
internal functions. Every single case I've looked at so far has been =
traced to code that was written incorrectly, where some code somewhere =
was not properly guarding its values, and error cases were slipping =
through.


For one of the teams I work with (the only one trying to make the =
relevant changes), this is also their "biggest" problem... but they are =
having exactly the opposite experience, a considerable amount of hours =
have gone into finding and changing their code, and not a single change =
was for code that was "written incorrectly" (I suppose that depends on =
what you think "correct" code is)... the other teams I work with are =
either suppressing this notice, or simply not upgrading to 8.1.

Craig