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Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:45:49 -0600
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To: Ron Korving <r.korving@xit.nl>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [PATCH] Scalar type hinting ;)
From: brianm@dealnews.com (Brian Moon)

Ron Korving wrote:
> If you ask me, scaler type hinting should try to do some auto-conversion.
> That way, the type hints would actually be useful.

While I like the idea of type hinting on scalars, I agree that it causes 
issues.  Using request data is the main issue.  Its all strings.

The only way I see it working is if the hints converted the data and 
checked if it "changed".  So, "1" and 1 are "the same" so it does not 
complain.  Likewise, any number could be changed to a string.  But 
non-numeric strings changing to 0 would throw an error.  That is the 
main place where scalars cause issues.

That does bring up the question of why scalar as a hint is not supported.

function test (scalar $var) {
     echo $var;
}

I would seem that would have made sense.  Currently, that code throws:

Fatal error: Argument 1 passed to test() must be an object of class scalar

That is funny on its own.

-- 

Brian Moon
-------------
http://dealnews.com/
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