Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:61490
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain garfieldtech.com from 66.111.4.27 cause and error)
Message-ID: <50082B38.1070603@garfieldtech.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2012 10:43:52 -0500
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120614 Thunderbird/13.0.1
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: internals@lists.php.net
References: <5007D707.2070100@hoa-project.net> <CAOhuFvZMp4KXmkDm-uOwq6xxw5z3gfvwj1DhOjE29p+sVbKiew@mail.gmail.com> <095CAA408DA94AFB9E75C12877A9043D@charliesomerville.com> <CAOhuFvbEs5nZpYqUz7MpcjYFf+AkAb0S99CgP1pWFu-AquN07A@mail.gmail.com> <CAE8Xsdg9X_EWSbQ_WSRNBYoedtHcO_QeRGPp3jK4Spm7pwR=tw@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAE8Xsdg9X_EWSbQ_WSRNBYoedtHcO_QeRGPp3jK4Spm7pwR=tw@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Make try/catch brackets optinal
From: larry@garfieldtech.com (Larry Garfield)

On 7/19/12 5:11 AM, Peter Beverloo wrote:

>> I have seen this problem happen, people losing time trying to figure out
>> what is wrong only to find
>> its a missing bracket.
>> As Paul said, this is bug-prone.
>>
>
> Other bracket-less blocks allow authors to shoot themselves in the foot
> equally so, yet PHP supports these as well. The actual problem here is an
> inconsistency in the parser, which I'd consider to be a bug.
>
> Peter


PHP doesn't support optional brackets on functions, either; please no 
one suggest that.

Yes, it's inconsistent that some structures allow short-circuited 
brackets.  The solution isn't to let all structures have the 
bug-attracting syntax.  If it wouldn't break a few zillion lines of 
existing code I'd say we should resolve the inconsistency by making the 
braces required on if/foreach/etc.  PHP only has them optional due to a 
C/C++ legacy, which may have made sense when the byte size of source 
code actually mattered for storage efficiency.

Yes, I have run into bugs that were caused by people forgetting braces. 
  Yes, I have introduced bugs without realizing it because someone left 
off a brace and I didn't notice it.  Yes, I now always add braces when 
looking at someone's code; I can't even read it otherwise anymore.  Any 
respectable coding standard requires the otherwise-optional braces.

And yes, I always close my </p> tags as well, and so should you! :-)

--Larry Garfield