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Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 13:09:18 -0400
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: Type hinting revisited for PHP 5.3
From: gwynne@darkrainfall.org (Gwynne Raskind)

On Jul 1, 2009, at 12:59 PM, Ilia Alshanetsky wrote:
> There has been quite a bit of discussion on this list, IRC,  
> developer meetings, etc... about introduction of type hinting to  
> PHP. Most people appear to think that this would be a good idea, but  
> there is a reason why it is not in PHP already. The main source of  
> conflict appears to be that in some cases typical type hinting is  
> just too strict for PHP's typeless nature (most people expect that  
> "1" == 1, while int type hint would definitely reject string "1").   
> Personally, I disagree with that opinion, but I can understand  
> people who raise that issue. At work we've been using PHP 5.2 with  
> type hinting for nearly 2 years now with great success, it makes  
> code much easier to read and understand and the security benefit of  
> type hinting is not to be under valued. In many cases type hinting  
> can present a last line of defense against unexpected input for  
> numeric fields, which are typically abused to do SQL injection.
[snip]
> My hope is that the latest changes will allow this to become a  
> standard part of PHP.

+1 (+1000, actually :)

-- Gwynne