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Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2006 23:23:11 +0300
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Return value of convert_to_*()
From: antony@zend.com (Antony Dovgal)

On 12/27/2006 11:02 PM, Andrei Zmievski wrote:
> Antony and I just had a spirited discussion on IRC about his latest 
> patches to convert_to_unicode() and convert_to_string(). The specific 
> troublesome point was conversion of IS_OBJECT type. His point was that 
> since all we care about is the end result, then the function should 
> return SUCCESS regardless of whether the object could convert itself to 
> a string or whether we forced the conversion and got a simple "Object" 
> string. I do not subscribe to this point of view. I added return values 
> to conversion functions precisely because I wanted to distinguish 
> between "good" and "forced" conversions. 

Why do you want that?
"Bad" conversion is failed conversion, that's the case when you get E_RECOVERABLE_ERROR and it bails out.

I consider all the other cases are "good" conversions, since we've got the result we requested and have 
SUCCESSfully converted the object into string.

> One such place is zend_parse_parameters(). If you say zpp(..., "s", &str, &str_len) and 
> the user passes an object without __toString() method, zpp() should 
> issue an error saying that it expected a string and got an object 
> instead, even if we "forced" the conversion result to be a string in 
> convert_to_string().

An error? You mean this one:
zend_error(E_NOTICE, "Object of class %v to string conversion", Z_OBJCE_P(op)->name);
?
We already have it, no need for a new error.

It's perfectly legal to do it in 5.2 and I don't see why PHP6 is different.
IMO it's same as changing the E_RECOVERABLE to E_ERROR - users won't have any way to "workaround" it, 
even though this was the original intention of E_RECOVERABLE.

-- 
Wbr, 
Antony Dovgal