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Date: Sat, 22 May 2010 18:30:15 +0200
Message-ID: <AANLkTinbzzKJlnCvJvunbxyJK_sufCi4sDcfH008evtx@mail.gmail.com>
To: Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com>
Cc: internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Type hinting
From: phpwnd@gmail.com (Josh Davis)

On 22 May 2010 17:04, Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com> wrote:
> As one of the key people who designed PHP's type system I consider strict
> type checks completely alien to and counterintuitive in PHP and am therefore
> pushing to implement 'weak' typing instead, in a way that's consistent and
> familiar to users.

I would normally refrain from posting on the dev list but as a "user"
I feel the need to make sure that my position isn't misrepresented, so
here it is.

As you wrote, you worked on PHP's _type system_ which is dynamic,
really cool, juggles strings with ints and what not. However, the
topic here is the _type hinting system_. As far as I know, there's no
"weak" type hinting; if a method signature hints for an array and is
given an integer, it throws a catchable fatal error. Therefore, as a
user, what I am familiar to is a strict _type hinting system_.
Anything else would feel inconsistent to me.

Thanks for reading.

JD