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Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2011 13:37:01 -0700
Message-ID: <BANLkTinWpCQRcrsn+o0w-M4ar58VVSBXNw@mail.gmail.com>
To: Pierre Joye <pierre.php@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC: Short syntax for Arrays (redux)
From: mike503@gmail.com (Michael Shadle)

On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 1:01 PM, Pierre Joye <pierre.php@gmail.com> wrote:

> I modified the vote page, pls move your votes to the desired syntax
> (or global -1)

This is a good idea to group things like this.

Back on the soapbox. All of this is just to reduce typing "array" (5
characters) before things?

Old:
$foo = array('a' => 'b', 'c' => 'd');

More than likely new:
$foo = ['a' => 'b', 'c' => 'd'];

5 character difference for each array being saved. That's it. At the
expense of syntax highlighters, IDEs, books, all becoming outdated and
need to be updated. For a language construct that has been around for
what, 10 years?

Oh, and for anyone desiring a ":" for this new shorthand, why stop at
array shorthand. Why not change this from:
foreach($foo as $key => $val)

To:
foreach($foo as $key: $val)

That would save one character for each array iteration like that.

Also - if we're worried about saving characters and shorthand why not
just remove the "$" language construct? That's a LOT of keystrokes. In
my WordPress install, that's 75,412 characters saved. Versus 6,960
"array(" matches, which would save 34,800 characters.

These were quick examples from a coworker. Just another PHP user who
said "wait why would they make another way to express an array?"