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Date: 29 Mar 2003 14:23:29 +0100
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Subject: Re: [Zend Engine 2] Type hints revisited [IllegalArgumentException
	instead of E_ERROR]
From: thekid@thekid.de (Timm Friebe)

On Sat, 2003-03-29 at 13:10, Zeev Suraski wrote:
[...]
> >After reading through a bunch of mails this generated, I get the idea
> >that most people here would be happier with an E_WARNING and the
> >function not being executed.
> 
> ?!
> 
> How the heck can we even think about such a thing?  When you call a 
> function, you expect it to run.  The code that follows it may rely on stuff 
> that it has done.  Not running it is simply not an option, I can't even 
> begin to imagine the possible consequences of such an approach!

Well, at the moment, the function is not run either, isn't it? The
program dies.

To clarify:

function foo(Bar $bar) {
  // [...]
}

is - with my patch - equivalent to:

function foo($bar) {
  if (!($bar instanceof Bar)) {
    trigger_error('Argument 1 must be an instance of Bar', E_WARNING);
    return;
  }

  // [...]
}

and basically much nicer as a function containing - say - five or six
arguments all needing to be checked in the "not-instance-of" manner.

At the moment, it is:

function foo($bar) {
  if (!($bar instanceof Bar)) {
    die('Argument 1 must be an instance of Bar');
  }

  // [...]
}

That's all I changed.

> Type hints are shortcuts for instanceof.  If you want to handle a situation 
> where the function is passed the wrong arguments, don't use type hints, use 
> instanceof.  Or use the errors-for-exceptions mode that we may have.

I guess, as we can't find a consensus here, that is what has to be done.

- Timm