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Date: Tue, 31 May 2011 14:16:39 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: Short syntax for Arrays (redux)
From: rasmus@lerdorf.com (Rasmus)

On 05/31/2011 11:52 AM, Sean Coates wrote:
> I'm one of the people who've brought it up on Twitter. Today's discussion seems to have earned some traction, which is a step in the right direction, I believe.
> 
>> I would prefer (as Rasmus pointed out) not to start a long discussion about it. Primarily I would be curious if anyone on the lists (from the RFC wiki page) below would like to change your vote or if you are not listed below and would like to be counted, that would be great too.
> 
> At risk of turning this into a longer-than-necessary discussion, I believe a new RFC is required at this point. Making [ and ] work as (T_ARRAY, '(') and (')'), respectively is no longer good enough, for the main reason you've pointed out: JSON is becoming ubiquitous; actual first-class JSON would be very valuable to me.

The tricky part with going all json is the syntax, specifically the {}'s

But I think it is doable, mostly because this is not valid today:

  $a = true ? { 1 : 2 };

And in json if you have {}'s you have to have a ':' inside.

I have always preferred to "borrow" a familiar syntax from other
languages that the average PHP user is comfortable with instead of
making up a new one.

Stas, I didn't understand your point about eval() and security. What did
you mean?

-Rasmus