Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:127748
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Precedence: bulk
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 16.0 \(3826.600.51.1.1\))
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Make Reflection*::getDocComment() return an empty
 string instead of false
Date: Wed, 25 Jun 2025 13:56:09 +0200
References: <YaJrvr69GYjTEI8_yULnrtV4XjfR2tfQIBBGtJrLH_dO62WsKXcmMdUCk-FaPMIilVRlQWX5BZleaxBcCinSwmfMnJR_-whG2jLSflKN85E=@gpb.moe>
To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
In-Reply-To: <YaJrvr69GYjTEI8_yULnrtV4XjfR2tfQIBBGtJrLH_dO62WsKXcmMdUCk-FaPMIilVRlQWX5BZleaxBcCinSwmfMnJR_-whG2jLSflKN85E=@gpb.moe>
Message-ID: <2108D675-AEF0-410B-9BD1-E68BFEBE4F9B@cschneid.com>
From: cschneid@cschneid.com (Christian Schneider)

Am 25.06.2025 um 12:37 schrieb Gina P. Banyard <internals@gpb.moe>:
> While working on the deprecation to/from bool type juggling in =
functions RFC and seeing the impact within Symfony, we found a common =
slightly annoying case.
> The getDocComment method of various Reflection classes was always used =
as a string, and we thought changing the behaviour in PHP made more =
sense.
>=20
> I submitted a PR [1] but was asked to gather feedback on the mailing =
list.
>=20
> Please let me know what you think.

In general I like out-of-band instead of in-band signalling as it seems =
more robust to me.

I am a bit confused why it was false in the first place and not null as =
the absence of something was in my book the definition of null.
But then again I realise there is a general aversion against null.

I noticed that the "empty string for absence of value" was also used in =
DOMElement::getAttribute() but you can argue that the existence of =
DOMElement::hasAttribute() fills this gap.

Anyway, I'm not a big fan of this move but won't fight it either.

Regards,
- Chris