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Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2023 23:29:08 +0300
Message-ID: <CAAwdEzCGYHukrU+tF3vEzKxx3rcVK32W1H_kBf=4j9rupKx+KA@mail.gmail.com>
To: Oladoyinbo Vincent <oladoyinbov@gmail.com>
Cc: Mike Schinkel <mike@newclarity.net>, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com>, 
	php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="000000000000358a640608cca92f"
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Basic Type Alias
From: drealecs@gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Alexandru_P=C4=83tr=C4=83nescu?=)

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Hey,

So actually while reading this:

On Fri, Oct 27, 2023 at 11:42=E2=80=AFPM Oladoyinbo Vincent <oladoyinbov@gm=
ail.com>
wrote:

> And also, in order to group and namespace the Type Alias, i suggest we us=
e
> `typedef`, like i specify in my last message, it will be like this:
>
> File A.php:
>
> ```php
>
> namespace Package;
>
> typedef MyTypes {
>
>     type Numeric: int|float|null;
>
>     type Chars: string|null;
>
>     type Result: bool|null;
>
> }
>
>
 I came up with an idea:

In php we don't have inner/nested classes, like in Java.
But maybe at some point we could have. An inner class would help with
avoiding some extra files and autoloading, especially when that class would
be needed as private.

Coming back to types, what if a type would be allowed to be defined on the
class level?
It would solve the autoloading problem as it would be loaded together with
the class.
And I guess that in real-life, complex types are usually related to some
code using them, so I expect that identifying a class where the type to be
placed would not be hard.
And even if it would be difficult, There can always be a class named Types
that would have only type definitions.

An example would look like this:

namespace My\App;
class Types {
    public type Numeric: int|float;
}

And it could be used with:

use My\App\Types.Numeric;
function castNumericToFloat(Numeric $number): float {
    return (float)$number;
}

or

use My\App\Types;
function castNumericToFloat(Types.Numeric $number): float {
    return (float)$number;
}

or by using an import alias, of course.

Maybe we can use this construct, along with allowing a type to be defined
in a normal way, a way that would not permit autoloading.
However, a way that would better fit code that is procedural and it can be
loaded in the same functions.php that some projects use.

Allowing inner "types" on classes might be a bit more complex that I can
ever evaluate.
But it might open the door for inner classes and there are nice constructs
that can be built using this.

Regards,
Alex

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