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To: Richard Lynch <ceo@l-i-e.com>, "internals@lists.php.net"
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Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 03:46:56 -0500
Thread-Topic: [PHP-DEV] PHP Philosophy (was RE: [PHP-DEV] Scalar type
 hinting)
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Subject: RE: [PHP-DEV] PHP Philosophy (was RE: [PHP-DEV] Scalar type hinting)
From: johncrenshaw@priacta.com (John Crenshaw)

> From: Richard Lynch [mailto:ceo@l-i-e.com]=20
> On Wed, February 29, 2012 7:16 pm, John Crenshaw wrote:
> > I'm beginning to think that the type hinting question is too closely=20
> > related to the dirty secrets of type juggling to resolve them=20
> > separately. You may have to either discard consistency, or else fix=20
> > the problem of silent bizarre conversions at the same time ('foo'=3D=3D=
0,=20
> > '123abc'=3D123). Fixing the conversions is a BC break though.
>=20
> [short version]
> One man's "fixing" is another man's "feature" :-)
>=20
> Old hands can now hit delete while I wax philosophical.

The operative word was "silent". The actual behavior is fine, but the silen=
ce is unexpected. For example, PHP happily accepts substr('foo', 'bar') wit=
h no complaint at all. From a purely philosophical perspective I think almo=
st everyone would expect *at least* a strict notice.

On a practical level, we have a major barrier and we'll have to decide how =
to handle it. As I see it we could do one of the following:
1. Discard consistency (!!)
2. Try to convince people to make these bizarre conversions not silent (BC =
break)
3. Try to find a creative solution to be consistent without changing anythi=
ng about the conversion behavior. (I'm not seeing a way to do this one, unl=
ess we redefine "consistent".)

John Crenshaw
Priacta, Inc.