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To: larry@garfieldtech.com
Cc: php internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] [Discussion] Add clamp function
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2025 06:36:52 +0000
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From: hanskrentel@yahoo.de (Hans Krentel)




On Wednesday 27 August 2025 18:40:51 (+02:00), Larry Garfield wrote:


> ...So it looks like CSS is the oddball here. We should follow the clear
> majority approach...

While the majority of languages favor `clamp($value, $min, $max)`,
dismissing the CSS order without examining the "why" misses a valuable
perspective, especially for a language so intertwined with web development.

The rationale for aligning with the majority (and the current RFC) boils
down to the **Principle of Least Surprise within PHP's own ecosystem**.

PHP is an imperative language. Its standard library functions,
particularly in math, consistently take the value to be operated on as
the first argument: `min($value1, $value2)`, `max($value1, $value2)`,
`round($value, $precision)`. Introducing `clamp($min, $value, $max)`
would break this pattern, making it the odd one out *within PHP itself*.
This internal inconsistency would be a greater source of errors for PHP
developers than not matching an external standard like CSS.

The solution to the CSS dissonance is not to change the function but to
**document it explicitly**:

> **Note for Web Developers:** This function uses the argument order
> `clamp(value, min, max)`, which differs from the CSS function
> `clamp(min, value, max)`.

This addresses the concern head-on. The ultimate win is not the argument
order itself, but the mere existence of the function, which finally
banishes the awkward and error-prone `max($min, min($max, $value))`
incantation.

My 2cents,
--hakre