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Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2023 23:14:06 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC][Discussion] Harmonise "untyped" and "typed" properties
From: tovilo.ilija@gmail.com (Ilija Tovilo)

Hi Rowan,

Thanks for the RFC.

On Thu, Nov 16, 2023 at 9:42=E2=80=AFPM Rowan Tommins <rowan.collins@gmail.=
com> wrote:
>
> I have finally written up an RFC I have been considering for some time:
> Harmonise "untyped" and "typed" properties
>
> RFC URL: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/mixed_vs_untyped_properties

Unifying the unset behavior sounds sensible. I don't see a good reason
for a declared property to be hidden through unset. If this behavior
is desired, the property should be declared dynamically in the
constructor with #[AllowDynamicProperties] added to the class.

Like Jakub, I am also worried about the BC break of changing the
default value to uninitialized. However, I don't think opt-in behavior
is worthwhile (because I don't believe people make sufficient use of
it, while adding something new we have to support forever). If we pick
either of the options you presented (1. initialize all nullable
properties to null, 2. Make all properties uninitialized) I'd vote for
the first one. Then again, given (it seems) people are happier with
the strict behavior of typed properties, do we need to unify the
behavior at all if it means losing that? Currently, they can choose
the behavior  they prefer by adding or omitting mixed.

Furthermore, the first approach clashes somewhat with readonly.
Readonly can't have null as a default value because that would make it
legal to access the value before the property is explicitly
initialized, and the property would no longer be uninitialized, making
the explicit assignment illegal. We could just not add the default
value for readonly, but that means more special rules that we're
trying to avoid.

Ilija