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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal: Array syntax
From: cm@leetspeak.org (Michael Walter)

Marco Tabini wrote:
> George Schlossnagle wrote:
> 
>>
>> On Nov 5, 2003, at 1:29 PM, Marco Tabini wrote:
>>
>>> $a = [1,2,$b[11]] is semantically inconsistent.
>>
>>
>>
>> How so?  Is
>>
> 
> I think I've already explained why.

Not really understandable, though.

> 
>> foo(array(1,2));
>>
>> semantically inconsistent?  On one hand () is used with a language 
>> construct (array()), whereas in the other context it indicates 
>> arguments to a function.  I think that is what he meant by 'grouping' 
>> and 'application'.
>>
> 
> Actually, I think it meant something else. In any case, semantically you 
> can still think of array() as a function (until you throw in key 
> declarations, of course ;) )

Yup, I told you I meant something different (although on the same line 
of reasoning). I think you misunderstand "semantics", anyway. You should 
not think of array() as a function, as basically everything else except 
to the syntax is different to "real" functions, consider 
call_user_func('array', 1, 2, 3) or array_map('array', array(1, 2, 3), 
array("Foo", "Bar", "Baz"));

How much better would look map('array', [1..3], ["Foo", "Bar", "Baz"]); 
anyway.. (although we really should not argue about that, as it's simply 
taste).

>> Similar tokens have different syntactical meaning all over the 
>> language.  Compare '<<' and '<<<'.  To me that is no diffent that 
>> <variable>[] and [].
> 
> 
> Again, that's not a good reason to introduce more.

That is a statement backed up by good argumentation. :)