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Date: Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:46:56 +0000
Message-ID: <10845a340912310246w230e8031qf659d336bacbe1cc@mail.gmail.com>
To: Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com>
Cc: Alexey Zakhlestin <indeyets@gmail.com>, PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] invalid params return value
From: rquadling@googlemail.com (Richard Quadling)

2009/12/31 Stanislav Malyshev <stas@zend.com>:
> Hi!
>
>> Would changing the returning value to Null to indicate invalid
>> arguments (or any other error condition) would create a significant BC
>> surely? Just how many functions are documented with the entity
>> &return.falseforfailure;? (198 files using this so far vs Return
>> &null; which is used very rarely).
>
> There are different kinds of failure. There's failure for the function (i.e.
> function tried to do something and failed, like couldn't open the file) and
> failure where function wheren't even executed (like you called fopen without
> giving it a filename). Some functions return the same in both cases, some do
> not. I'm sure half of the functions documented as &return.falseforfailure;
> return NULL on incorrect args.
>
> As for BC - it may break some scripts that don't check properly but having
> each function do different thing is worse, since you couldn't even write a
> proper check - since you have no way of knowing what to check for.
>

Aha. I see, so, a big +1 for consistency for argument checking.

-- 
-----
Richard Quadling
"Standing on the shoulders of some very clever giants!"
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