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To: "'Gustavo Lopes'" <glopes@nebm.ist.utl.pt>, <internals@lists.php.net>
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Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2011 18:23:42 -0500
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Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] 5.4 regression: non-existent sub-sub keys now have values
From: mike@rile.ca ("Mike Robinson")

On November-23-11 5:31 PM Gustavo Lopes wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 21:06:09 -0000, Pierre Joye <pierre.php@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> 
> > The fact that we have reports here showing code not working anymore
> > because of this change tells me that it is a BC break. We can call it
> > a bug fix but it still breaks code out there for no real benefit but
> > edge case usages. We had this situation before, that does not help
> us.
> >
> 
> I'd say for no benefit at all. Why would anyone ever want to take a
> string offset from a string that certainly has length 1? Except for
> taking satisfaction in this "improved consistency", I see absolutely no
> benefit.
> 
> Up until now, it was deemed a useless but innocuous change. Now that we
> found it has pernicious side effects, we ought to revert it.

Notwithstanding that this behaviour was possible because of a bug, it has
admittedly been relied on since time immemorial, making it a significant
BC break.

As distasteful as it seems, it absolutely should be reverted IMHO.

Best Regards,

Mike Robinson