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Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2023 08:11:13 -0500
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To: Deleu <deleugyn@gmail.com>
Cc: Levi Morrison via internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Two new functions array_first() and array_last()
From: brandonja991@gmail.com (Brandon Jackson)

> This function signature can be accomplished by userland once we have `arr=
ay_key_first()` and `array_first()`. It's much better to keep `array_first(=
)` as simple as possible and let everyone build their own approach to go ab=
out it since we have so many approaches.

The goal wasn't necessarily to keep them together. The goal was to
introduce an arguably simple way to:
1. Be able to get the first/last value of an array.
2. Know if the value was actually in existence or not, rather than
just blindly returning null when it could be a valid value.
3. Accompany multiple use cases like needing to return a default if
not found or throwing an exception.
4. Offer a way to know if the value existed or not and act accordingly
without additional logic checking the key.
5. Address the seeming genericness of the function name.
  * If I were someone who seen the name for the first time. I'd see it
and ask array_first what? And proceed to the docs.

The different approaches are trying to figure out the best way to know
whether the result was the actual value from the array or some baked
in language default null.

I get your desire to keep things simple, but IMO returning a value
that does not conflict with possibly valid values or somehow indicates
the value was not present is important, and should come before
simplicity. Which likely means involving the key somehow.