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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Return Type Hinting for Methods RFC
From: smalyshev@sugarcrm.com (Stas Malyshev)

Hi!

> is_numeric is not good enough in some cases, like when searching for value
> in MongoDB where it matches agains typed value.
>
>         function age_check(int $age)
>         {
>             // do stuff
>         }
>
> This would require less code, easier to read and will catch wrong type at
> runtime easy and throw recoverable fatal error that you can catch.

You can catch and do what? By that time you application has failed with 
no chance to recover, since you can't go back to age_check call and say 
"oh, sorry, when I said '1' I actually meant integer 1, please accept 
it!" The only thing you can do is to output a nice error message, and 
since this is nothing the user can correct, since it's not his problem 
but a code bug, it'll be something like "something went wrong, oops, 
please go to another page of the site and hope it will be programmed 
better than this one!". That's pretty much your options when using 
strict typed function - unless you either have strict typing throughout 
the whole code path(s) that lead to the age_check call or do an explicit 
check with explicit failure handling each time you try to call it.

> the well designed IDE can also catch error in your code if your parameters
> and all returnes are typed, so that will also save you a lot of time.

I start to feel "well designed IDE" is a substitute for a compiler for 
some. PHP is not a compiled language, however, at least not yet - and 
since it's not, relying on mythical "well designed IDE" to perform the 
function that compiler performs in static-typed compiled languages is, 
IMHO, misguided.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/
(408)454-6900 ext. 227