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In-Reply-To: <CAFPFaMLtOAkRzTsqfdhvkZZ17JpUBg_WSQBpgVU6+xg-mLt2zA@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 2023 16:28:31 +0000
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Message-ID: <5FC8DBAF-8D78-4E94-A3B0-3BDED3A3E53C@craigfrancis.co.uk>
References: <CAFPFaMLtOAkRzTsqfdhvkZZ17JpUBg_WSQBpgVU6+xg-mLt2zA@mail.gmail.com>
To: "G. P. B." <george.banyard@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Path to Saner Increment/Decrement operators
From: craig@craigfrancis.co.uk (Craig Francis)

On 17 Jan 2023, at 14:28, G. P. B. <george.banyard@gmail.com> wrote:
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/saner-inc-dec-operators
>=20
> The goal of this RFC is to reduce language complexity by making $v++ =
behave
> like $v +=3D 1 and $v-- behave like $v -=3D 1;
>=20
> I am expecting the contentious part of the proposal to be the =
deprecation
> of the PERL string increment feature to achieve the aforementioned =
goal.


Hi George,

Just to confirm, you're suggesting the following would be broken:

```
$ref =3D 'A';
$ref++;
var_dump($ref); // 'B'

$ref =3D 'Z';
$ref++;
var_dump($ref); // 'AA'
$ref++;
var_dump($ref); // 'AB'
```

I've seen this used a few times, e.g. starting with a numerical value =
(Passport number, NHS number, Social Security Number, Date of Birth =
20230117), and the developer simply appends an incrementing letter on =
the end to get a unique reference; e.g. a person having multiple =
assessments... especially if it's more than 26 (A-Z), and you need to =
move to multiple letters, which `chr(90 + 1)` cannot help you with.

That said, I appreciate that incrementing some strings can be a bit =
unusual (e.g. "A9" to "B0", vs "A 9" to "A 0").

Craig