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Date: Wed, 20 Nov 2024 20:09:14 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Deprecate alternate switch case syntax?
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From: dossche.niels@gmail.com (Niels Dossche)

On 20/11/2024 15:45, Theodore Brown wrote:
> Hello Internals,
> 
> I recently found out (after 15 years of being a PHP developer) that PHP allows using a semicolon rather than a colon after case statements. [1] I.e.:
> 
>     switch ($value) {
>         case 'foo';
>         case 'bar':
> 		case 'baz';
>             echo 'foo, bar, or baz';
>             break;
>         default;
>             echo 'Other';
>     }
> 
> Apparently this syntax has been allowed since at least the PHP 4 days, but very few developers know about it.
> 
> I ran a script on the top 1000 Composer packages to gauge usage, and out of 35,777 total case statements, only 15 in two packages used the alternate syntax. All were accidental typos (randomly mixed in with statements using the normal syntax), and I opened pull requests to fix both (the first has already been merged):
> 
> - https://github.com/reactphp/promise/pull/264
> - https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3486526
> 
> Would it be worthwhile for me to write an RFC to propose deprecating the alternate switch case syntax in PHP 8.5?
> 
> The main reason for deprecation/removal it is that it causes confusion. A developer may think the alternate syntax behaves differently in some way from a regular case statement (e.g. preventing fallthrough or something), when it actually does not.
> 
> Best regards,
> Theodore
> 
> Note: The normal case syntax has been part of the PSR-2 coding style since 2012, and PHP-CS-Fixer automatically fixes usages of the non-standard syntax when using the @PSR2 or newer @PER-CS rulesets.
> 
> [1]: https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/15258

Hi

I'm not convinced that getting rid of this is a good idea.
It doesn't seem to cause real harm and as Kamil/cmb pointed out there was a legit reason to have this.
So I'm not in favor of deprecating this.

Kind regards
Niels