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Date: Sat, 01 Sep 2012 18:35:49 -0700
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Support negative indexes for arrays and strings
From: smalyshev@sugarcrm.com (Stas Malyshev)

Hi!

> The idea was originally proposed by Marc Easen who created a patch
> and asked for help with putting together an RFC.  I have yet to see a
> formal proposal but on the list Easen modified his idea so that it
> should apply to strings alone.  With that in mind, would it really
> cause problems to have code like this:
> 
> $string = "Roses are red"; $string[-3] = "R";  // modifying
> $string[10] echo $string; // Roses are Red

I see how this may work for strings and simple vectors, but what about this:

$a = array(-1 => "foo", -2 => "bar"); echo $a[-1];

It should keep returning "foo", right? So then the question is - what
$array[-1] actually means? Right now I'm not sure I understand it. I
guess if somebody wrote an RFC on that it'd make understanding it
easier. I see that the patch seems to address just the string part - but
the subject also mentions arrays. I think making it clear would be helpful.
-- 
Stanislav Malyshev, Software Architect
SugarCRM: http://www.sugarcrm.com/
(408)454-6900 ext. 227