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Date: Wed, 21 May 2025 16:13:11 +0200
To: Volker Dusch <volker@tideways-gmbh.com>
Cc: php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: [RFC] Clone with v2
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From: tim@bastelstu.be (=?UTF-8?Q?Tim_D=C3=BCsterhus?=)

Hi

Am 2025-05-19 12:48, schrieb Volker Dusch:
> We're still looking for feedback on the ...variadic approach to the 
> Syntax:
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/clone_with_v2#open_issues, as we only got one
> reply so far on the topic.

I was hoping for some additional opinions here before adding my own, but 
since this does not appear to happen, adding my personal opinion on this 
matter now:

*Some* property name being completely incompatible with “clone with” (no 
matter how the first parameter is going to be called) is a limitation 
that should not exist, it feels like a feature that is broken by design 
and I think I really would hate it if the documentation of this RFC 
would need a “Caution: It is not possible to reassign a property called 
'$object', due to a parameter name conflict”.

Adjusting the signature to `clone(object $object, array 
$withProperties)` would not have this problem and I don't consider the 
additional verbosity of an array literal to be a problem. Static 
analysis tools already understand array shapes and would need 
adjustments either way to understand the semantics.

 From an implementation PoV a regular array parameter would also be 
simpler, since the implementation would be able to simply pass along the 
input array, whereas the “variadic” syntax needs special handling to 
combine positional parameters with named parameters into a single array 
that is then used in the cloning process.

Syntax-wise there might also be a middle-ground. Similarly to how this 
RFC turns `clone()` into a function, the `array()` syntax also looks 
like a function call and would naturally extend to named parameters. 
While mixing positional and named parameters would probably get complex, 
allowing purely named parameters would trivially be possible (without 
any function call overhead). It would also allow using the 
first-class-callable syntax with `array(...)`, something I would liked 
to have in the past. A proof of concept PR is at:

https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/18613

Combining named-parameter `array()` syntax with clone taking a array as 
the second parameter would allow for the following, which might combine 
the best of both worlds?

     clone($obj, array(foo: 1, bar: "baz", object: "this is not 
blocked"));

Best regards
Tim Düsterhus