Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:42350
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 72.14.220.156 as permitted sender)
DomainKey-Status: bad
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
        d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
        h=message-id:date:from:reply-to:sender:to:subject:cc:in-reply-to
         :mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding
         :content-disposition:references:x-google-sender-auth;
        b=EncU5FjNuYjJo+3pP+lZNwUvOBC0uHoRZmz16BaLsMSx2LPzv3B4V5cSSSFWeILRoW
         LsYjm9sMl44ErmC63TpvxDk6DTCPKuh4ELQyxQcPWUXdP6Bx7+PMthg6EhTed06iWXqT
         JkbiSshY142q9rNB88Rnf3/+reF7lZGN51FkU=
Message-ID: <b19eae4e0812190650w72d990e3s2e9d7802bfe32891@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:50:40 +0000
Reply-To: viroteck@viroteck.net
Sender: surreal.w00t@gmail.com
To: "troels knak-nielsen" <troelskn@gmail.com>
Cc: "PHP Developers Mailing List" <internals@lists.php.net>
In-Reply-To: <98b8086f0812190640l6a2dd6bcm179031e36a50a122@mail.gmail.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
References: <69.22.48223.7E389494@pb1.pair.com> <494A3B12.80509@dmi.me.uk>
	 <494ABFD8.2090406@suse.de> <494ACAA8.6080600@dmi.me.uk>
	 <494ACEAE.2090700@gmail.com> <494AD2AF.9000702@gmail.com>
	 <2dedb8a0812181823q53a3b464oc1e2e2bd37792f98@mail.gmail.com>
	 <b19eae4e0812190538x6600d8eexc7ab2c10ce0fd40f@mail.gmail.com>
	 <494BB04C.40603@gmail.com>
	 <98b8086f0812190640l6a2dd6bcm179031e36a50a122@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Q on Primitives
From: viroteck@viroteck.net ("Robin Burchell")

On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 2:40 PM, troels knak-nielsen <troelskn@gmail.com> wrote:
> PHP is loosely typed. Adding typehints to primitives would change
> this. The only reason that it is working with object types, is because
> you can't automatically coerce object types anyway.
>
> --
> troels

I'm not sure what you are getting at here, really: the suggested
functionality is optional, and a new addition mean that it indeed will
not have an effect on backwards compatibility. What was the purpose of
your mail?

I cannot furthermore see why providing the choice for people to
strong-type when it suits their purposes as well as allowing weak
typing when useful is such a bad thing. Indeed, I'd quite love for
this mixture :)

I agree that typing *can* be accomplished in other ways, e.g.
instanceof and various other hacks, but they are then not enforcing it
in a uniform and controlled manner as type hinting does, plus they are
less elegant than providing it as an optional first class language
feature.