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Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 13:16:42 -0500
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Subject: Re: type hinting
From: auroraeosrose@gmail.com (Elizabeth M Smith)

Afternoon,

Wow, go away for a weekend and look what happens...

Personally I think the issue is that true "scalar" type hinting doesn't 
make much sense with a dynamically typed language.  Deciding if/when/how 
to juggle a scalar typehint is going to make at least one person angry 
and some new user confused.

However, I have to agree with the fact that the current typehinting 
system feels "unfinished".  I can tell a function that it has to be 
passed an array or some specific type of object, but can't tell it that 
it has to be passed a scalar type, or a resource, or any generic object.

These don't "juggle" well like the generic scalar (int, bool, float, 
string) types.  Is there any reason we can't at least add "scalar" and 
"resource" (and possibly "object" for generic objects) to typehints?  It 
wouldn't be the full "scalar typehinting" solution that people are 
yelling for, but it would cut out lines of bad input handling in my own 
code, and make the current typehint solution feel more complete.

My own $0.02,
Elizabeth Smith