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Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2025 09:09:56 +0100
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Optional Catch Block Body
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From: imsop.php@rwec.co.uk ("Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]")

On 31/07/2025 05:53, Mihail Liahimov wrote:
> Reduced Boilerplate: Eliminates unnecessary empty blocks when 
> exceptions only need to be caught and ignored.
> Improved Readability: Makes the code more concise and focuses on the 
> important parts.


The "boilerplate" in question is a single saved byte - ";" instead of 
"{}". Depending on keyboard layout one or the other might be slightly 
easier to type. Readability is always subjective, but I think most PHP 
programmers would quite easily read "{}" as "do nothing".

I suspect the real motivation here is that *coding standards* require 
more boilerplate than the language in this case, such as a newline 
between the opening and closing brace.

But PHP is not Python, where whitespace is enforced by the compiler; nor 
is it Go, where a coding standard is part of the standard library; so 
this is not the right place to change coding standards. Even if we add 
the short-hand syntax, there is nothing to stop those coding standards 
forbidding its use.

As others have said, good uses of empty catch blocks are rare - 
generally, you want to at least log that the exception happened, and 
where it was caught. And even those which are functionally empty often 
benefit from a comment explaining why they're not doing anything, which 
sits naturally between the braces.

If for some reason your project is commonly using completely empty catch 
blocks, you can document where and why "catch(Foo){}" is allowed in your 
local coding standard.


-- 
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]