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Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2024 20:23:16 +0200
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Optional constructor body
To: lilybergonzat+php@gmail.com, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com>
Cc: php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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From: tim@bastelstu.be (=?UTF-8?Q?Tim_D=C3=BCsterhus?=)

Hi

On 7/18/24 16:03, Lily Bergonzat wrote:
> I feel like the more substantial one would be more likely to break
> stuff, compared to the minor one, and so I don't see why the minor one
> would be refused?

There is no such thing as a minor syntax change. Any changes to the 
syntax has consequences for all the downstream tools trying to 
understand PHP. This includes IDEs, static analyzers, code formatting 
and linting tools, which would all need to be updated to understand the 
new syntax. Furthermore the syntax would need to be documented and 
translated within the PHP documentation.

That's quite a bit of effort to save a single character per class 
definition. In practice it will be even fewer, because not every class 
will have an empty constructor. Also whenever a class gets a non-trivial 
constructor in the future, the diff would not just consist of inserting 
the new code into the body, but also replacing the semicolon by braces, 
making the diff less readable.

I do not think this is worth it.

Best regards
Tim Düsterhus