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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Revisiting RFC: Engine Warnings -- Undefined array
 index
From: a.leathley@gmx.net (Andreas Leathley)

On 13.12.22 13:53, Dan Liebner wrote:
> It breaks my app. Does that count?

This sounds like you completely ignore notices in your application yet
elevate warnings to exceptions/errors. It would be better to log both
notices and warnings without generating exceptions/errors, and look
through those logs from time to time, to see possible issues (and
nothing would currently break that way). I used to suppress notices in
my applications too, but after logging them it was my experience that
notices can usually be easily avoided and often hint at oversights /
possible improvements.

> Here's another suggestion:
> Make accesses to undefined array keys (objects, variables, etc) return a
> new `undefined` primitive. That way, developers who are focused on writi=
ng
> concise, readable code can continue to write and maintain code manageabl=
y,
> and developers who are keen on writing a lot of code in a more "strict"
> manner can handle undefined array key accesses consistently, without hav=
ing
> to rely on configuration settings.

That would likely be a major change and break in the language (which is
usually frowned upon), but if you have a clear concept, you can create
an RFC for it and start a discussion.

I do think that your view on "concise, readable code" would in my mind
be code which is more prone to bugs and unclear in its intentions. If an
array index possibly does not exist and you check its value, it would
already be unclear to me if you mean to check for its existence, or for
a null value, or for a non-empty string, or something else. Making it
clear the index might not exist gives a reader more information, and
making the expected types (and checks) clearer in general is not an
exercise to be strict for fun, but to avoid bugs because of unexpected
values.