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Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:43:46 +0200
To: "Stanislav Malyshev" <stas@zend.com>
Cc: "Felipe Pena" <felipensp@gmail.com>, internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Type hints (parameter and return value)
From: paul.biggar@gmail.com ("Paul Biggar")

On Thu, Apr 17, 2008 at 8:41 PM, Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com> wrote:
> > is_* are the important functions, since they are the ones which most
> > resemble the type hints under discussion. Up until now, anyone
>
>  Circular argument here.

Yes, I phrased that badly. I believe it is fair to say that there
would be confusion over why is_int may fail after an 'int' type hint.
More generally, I think it is difficult to explain why an int type
hint does not guarantee an int.



> > implementing this in user-land would use is_int(). It makes perfect
>
>  No, you shouldn't do that - there's absolutely no reason to accept 1 and
> reject '1', unless you have some very rare and special circumstance. If you
> are using is_int for that, your code is wrong.

That is very subjective. I doubt there is 'one true style' of PHP,
despite suggestions I see about 'the PHP way'.  But let us suppose you
would use an int cast instead to ensure you have an int (by type, not
coerced value). The behaviour I recommend is also consistent with
casting. It would be syntactic sugar for

function ($x) { $x = (int) ($x); ... }




> > sense that type hints should mimic this behaviour. Not doing so would
> > be very inconsistent, and so confusing.
> >
>
>  Could we stop using word "consistent" to replace "I like it"?

I am very deliberately not using "consistent" to replace "I like it",
except in the sense that I like consistency. It makes no sense to find
that you do not have an int, when you specify you must. I very much
mean consistency, and do not have a preference for the approach,
except that only one seems perfectly consistent in this case, which is
why I have recommended it.


Paul

-- 
Paul Biggar
paul.biggar@gmail.com