Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:62632
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain lsces.co.uk from 213.123.26.187 cause and error)
Message-ID: <5041FA79.4070008@lsces.co.uk>
Date: Sat, 01 Sep 2012 13:07:21 +0100
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:13.0) Gecko/20120604 Firefox/13.0 SeaMonkey/2.10
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <CADqTB_i4id6ZUUo2X7Qgnz=SFTivf4L+xyNHj-MzOZB9o4u5GQ@mail.gmail.com> <CAH-PCH5Lr6D_kWG_1tC_vL7dJw6=-5YE9Wj9btakNxSqi8j71g@mail.gmail.com> <CADqTB_hSckLJ7NZkkA2dQG1Xk_52z42PVZxqP9a1Nbp1Us=BYA@mail.gmail.com> <F8DA6887-673D-43A9-9837-2DAE4F7E2073@gmail.com> <CAL+t6cFDyov7CfUQO9Zoqn++xSQgFBjmHRPHB+sxnE7LfP6DdA@mail.gmail.com> <5041CCE7.1000309@lsces.co.uk> <CAL+t6cGGdZk9-tKf3p4tKU+NmfpJBR-bCjBW+3wzFA6RwDfR7A@mail.gmail.com> <5041D6EF.7050308@lsces.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: <5041D6EF.7050308@lsces.co.uk>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Support negative indexes for arrays and strings
From: lester@lsces.co.uk (Lester Caine)

Lester Caine wrote:
> Sherif Ramadan wrote:
>> I can't understand what you mean by "Different means of identifying
>> position in the array"? If you mean a way to access an array's element
>> by its position in the array then yes, we already have that. It's
>> called array_slice() seehttp://php.net/array-slice  which allows you
>> to access elements in the array by their offset and that includes
>> using a negative offset. The key and the offset are two completely
>> different things.
>
> Never had to use it ;) But then there is a heck of a lot of stuff I've never
> even looked at.
> But it does blow this thread - when referring to collection arrays - out of the
> water? The problem I see is people trying to apply 'string' rules in the wrong
> way ... and I find that string handling works fine for me as it currently works
> but we probably just need to STOP people trying to apply the same rules to
> something that is totally different? And I though that 'string' -ve indexes had
> been sorted?

OK ... got back form the weekly chore of shopping, and was thinking about what I 
had said :)

"Different means of identifying position in the array"? I was probably thinking 
more along the lines of $numbers[-1] is a perfectly valid key on that array, so 
there is no way that it can be redefined otherwise. It would have to be 
something completely different such as $numbers[(-1)] to differentiate from the 
normal use of a key in the array ... and I would have to object strongly to 
adding that since it is different to other methods. The problem here was 
accepting that [-1] works differently on a string, and now we are seeing the 
consequences? It is only valid on a string and so this discussion needs a big 
brick wall between strings and 'collection arrays' ?

People who think they need a position based indexing obviously need educating in 
the use of the array_slice and the other functions that seem to go with that, 
but I can see that this method of handling array indexes ( rather than keys ) 
COULD benefit from a tidy up. As has been discussed in general on the whole 
array API?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
-----------------------------
Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact
L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk