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Date: Fri, 5 Jul 2024 22:39:15 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] [Discussion] Add bcdivmod to BCMath
To: Rob Landers <rob@bottled.codes>, Saki Takamachi <saki@sakiot.com>
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From: tim@bastelstu.be (=?UTF-8?Q?Tim_D=C3=BCsterhus?=)

Hi

On 6/30/24 18:08, Rob Landers wrote:
> We can argue the semantics of input/output, but the point still stands that return by reference is still more common than structured array, and even then, those are usually much bigger things.
> 

Happy to argue with you. I explained for each of the examples you 
mentioned how it differs from the use-case solved by `bcdivmod()`.

To give some examples of functions that return a structured array and 
that I believe to be reasonably similar (meaning: they destruct/parse 
the input value instead of just providing some metadata like 
opcache_get_status()):

- pathinfo()
- date_parse()
- getimagesize()
- openssl_x509_parse()
- password_get_info()

And for functions that return system information:

- opcache_get_status()
- sys_getloadavg()
- stat()

Please explain how their output arrays being “much bigger” makes a 
difference to how the API is perceived by the user that wants to use it.

Functions I see where the result is returned by out parameters only, 
without having a regular primary return value are (this also includes 
some closely related functions in openssl and socket that I do not list 
explicitly):

- getmxrr()
- openssl_csr_export()
- socket_getpeername()

And for all of those it would arguably a better API to just return the 
value and throw an Exception on failure.

Best regards
Tim Düsterhus