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Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 10:58:34 -0800
Message-ID: <698DE66518E7CA45812BD18E807866CE01103EE2@us-ex1.zend.net>
Thread-Topic: [PHP-DEV] type hinting
Thread-Index: AchPArFZAR5pKE7gSUKGG3AW4RV6WAAABuuQ
References: <477DB7BF.10201@chiaraquartet.net> <20080104105558.GC7861@mint.phcomp.co.uk> <477E5649.2080104@chiaraquartet.net> <477E619C.2050107@sektioneins.de> <FCE5B4DC-F9BC-4C84-BF27-9CD86B3FBE1D@prohost.org> <477E78D0.3050501@zend.com> <CF90BE82-99A0-4E64-AD60-189FE98FDC74@prohost.org> <698DE66518E7CA45812BD18E807866CE01103ED3@us-ex1.zend.net> <1199472536.15292.185.camel@sbarrow-desktop>
To: "Sam Barrow" <sam@sambarrow.com>
Cc: "Ilia Alshanetsky" <ilia@prohost.org>,
	"Stas Malyshev" <stas@zend.com>,
	"internals Mailing List" <internals@lists.php.net>
Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] type hinting
From: andi@zend.com ("Andi Gutmans")

Look it boils down to the following:

True type enforcement ala =3D=3D=3D (i.e. you pass "1" to an int and it =
errors
out) does not make sense for PHP (and yes, philosophy and design goals
of the language are important). Forget even the argument that this is
not how PHP works all around and is inconsistent with what we've done
from day 1 but more importantly if you are going towards strict typing
then you need a type system to implement that during "compile-time"
(i.e. like C or Java). You otherwise loose out because you are pushing
out all these type problems into production and it'll lead to too many
production errors, often when it may not have to be an error.

What I suggested in my previous email is type hinting which also does
the conversion to the request type. This is very much in the PHP spirit
and also how PHP's internal functions work today. It is "consistent".

Copy&pasting from my previous email the following would work:
function iwantint(int $n) {
iwantint("1");			// "1" + 1 works great.

function iwantstring(string $str) {}
iwantstring($toStringObject); // Works in strcmp()

function iwantfloat(float $f) {}
iwantfloat(2);

function iwantbool(bool $b) {}
iwantbool(1);

But honestly adding strict type hinting ala (int =3D=3D=3D int) just =
does not
make sense in this language. There's a reason why C/Java are able to
enforce this at compile-time and don't push this equality into runtime.
It's not we are right or wrong vs. those languages it's that those
languages take it all the way and when requiring true strict typing they
do it right. In PHP this equates to extending PHP with C.

Andi

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sam Barrow [mailto:sam@sambarrow.com]
> Sent: Friday, January 04, 2008 10:49 AM
> To: Andi Gutmans
> Cc: Ilia Alshanetsky; Stas Malyshev; internals Mailing List
> Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] type hinting
>=20
> On Fri, 2008-01-04 at 10:37 -0800, Andi Gutmans wrote:
> > I think the "mixed" identifier is a minor issue but I also don't see
> > it's purpose. If you don't want type hinting then don't write a type
> > hint. It's also tool friendly...
> > Andi
>=20
> It is kind of pointless, just syntactic sugar to be honest. Not a big
> deal at all though. I'd like it as I said for the syntactic sugar but
> personally I don't care too much.