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Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2023 09:10:21 +0200
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To: Deleu <deleugyn@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Expansion of PHP Symbols?
From: landers.robert@gmail.com (Robert Landers)

Hey Deleu,

I ended up on this list in the first place because I wanted to figure
out how to implement type aliases. I can confidently say why no one
wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole: implementing this will require
refactoring the entire type system. There currently isn't a 'type
table'; supporting type aliases will probably require one. I was able
to hack something together that used the import statements as a way to
work without that much changes (I never got autoloading to work, but I
suspect that was my unfamiliarity with the code, not that it was
impossible):

use int|float as Number;

at the top and it would work with fairly minimal changes to the
engine. Anything more complex or different required a huge
refactoring. However, from previous discussions, when that syntax was
brought up, it was shot down. It appears that people want code-wide
aliases, which goes back to refactoring (to the point of
re-implementing an entire type system) and people can't agree that
it's a good idea in the first place (i.e., what if you think int|float
is Number, but some other library has only float aliased to Number?)
and then that can be solved via imports ... but how does that work?

Basically, since it requires reimplementing an entire type system, I
think the maintainers (this is my impression, I'm not speaking for
them) want to be 100% sure what the syntax will be, how it will work,
and more importantly, agree as much as possible on that before ripping
out the existing system and replacing it with something else.

Anyway, that's my opinion on the matter, I'm sure others will have
different opinions. :)

Rob Landers
Utrecht, Netherlands