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Date: Sat, 22 Nov 2025 08:20:22 +0100 (CET)
To: Edmond Dantes <edmond.ht@gmail.com>
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] True Async RFC 1.6
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From: mails@thomasbley.de (Thomas Bley)


> Edmond Dantes <edmond.ht@gmail.com> hat am 22.11.2025 05:17 CET geschrieb=
en:
>=20
> =20
> Hello
>=20
> > from userland perspective I would prefer explicit declaration on each u=
sage of async over declare(), hooks and INI. This would make reviews, stati=
c code analysis, etc. easier.
> > RFCs can be written in small parts for each new function, e.g.
>=20
> This solution has the following consequences.
>=20
> We have a REST API project that is 10 years old. Recently we learned
> that PHP 9 has been released, and we can improve performance. To do
> this, we need to:
> 1. Migrate to another web server.
> 2. Wrap the request-handling code in a coroutine.
>=20
> However, it turns out this doesn=E2=80=99t work. If the code inside the
> coroutine doesn=E2=80=99t yield control, then there is no improvement at =
all.
> And we=E2=80=99re like=E2=80=A6 this technology is useless.
>=20
> And then one of the developers says: =E2=80=9CGuys, we just need to renam=
e all
> functions to _async and it will work.=E2=80=9D
> (And he=E2=80=99s this young optimistic perfectionist programmer who says=
:
> *=E2=80=9CThen the code will be beautiful, amazing, and blaaaaaazing!=E2=
=80=9D*)
>=20
> Everyone happily writes a script to rename 30-50,000 lines of a
> many-years-old project. New bugs appear. But we fix them, hoping for a
> better future.
> And then it turns out that after renaming the functions nothing works,
> because shared memory has to be removed.
>=20
> In other words, the team spent time on refactoring, and in the end
> they still had to do the refactoring that was unavoidable.
>=20
> What benefits did the developers gain?
> 1. Did the code become clearer? Yes, the code became a bit clearer.
> It=E2=80=99s visible that the functions will yield control.
> 2. Did the number of bugs decrease?
> 3. Did the amount of code changes become smaller?
> 4. Did API segmentation appear?
>=20
> People won=E2=80=99t rewrite code unless the business is at risk. And eve=
n
> then, very often no one does anything. Therefore, the **more**
> complicated the transition to asynchrony is, the **less likely** it is
> to ever happen.
> There is a chance that asynchrony could give the language a push
> toward greater memory safety and make it more functional in style.
> Because features in programming evolve according to the law of
> accessibility. The more accessible a feature is, the more likely it is
> to be used, and the more widespread it becomes. Go made parallel
> programming more common because it made it simpler.
>=20
> ---
> Ed

Maybe misunderstanding, I'm not proposing coroutines, I'm proposing to add =
new functions for async io. e.g.

// currently we have
$content =3D \file_get_contents(); // old function remains: sync, returns s=
tring|false

// new function file_get_contents_async
$promise =3D \file_get_contents_async(); // new function: async, returns a =
promise object

(similar to node.js using fs.readFile and fs.readFileSync)

Regarding 10 year old projects: I would only add new functions and don't ch=
ange existing functions for async io. So new async functions can be used, b=
ut don't need to be used.

I expect that's already a good improvement for many use cases to read multi=
ple files in parallel, run multiple queries in parallel, etc.

Best Regards
Thomas