Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:129532
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset=us-ascii
Precedence: list
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Mac OS X Mail 16.0 \(3826.700.81\))
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Type Aliases
In-Reply-To: <87e9d1bf-e407-45c1-9fad-d8759405ab8b@app.fastmail.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2025 15:27:55 -0600
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Message-ID: <D3A55D97-285D-4C92-B8EB-CD9565DC044C@pmjones.io>
References: <87e9d1bf-e407-45c1-9fad-d8759405ab8b@app.fastmail.com>
To: Rob Landers <rob@bottled.codes>
From: pmjones@pmjones.io ("Paul M. Jones")

Hey Rob & all,

One objection, one question.

The objection is to `include types 'types.php'`. You've clarified why =
types cannot be autoloaded (thanks again!) and so this is a way to let =
the compiler know where the types are. But I have to say I've spent a =
huge part of my career removing include/require when refactoring legacy =
code, and introducing it here causes me great heartache.

The question is a little more complicated, and also involves =
autoloading. Given a class Number that can be autoloaded ...

	namespace Foo;

	class Number { /* ... */ }

... and *another* class in the same namespace, that creates a "number" =
type alias...

	namespace Foo;

	use type int|float as Number;

	class Bar { public function add(Number $a, Number $b) : Number { =
/* ... */ }

... which one "wins" -- the runtime autoloaded class, or the =
compile-time type alias?

(Apologies if this is covered in the RFC and I missed it.)


-- pmj