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Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2012 09:37:41 +0200
To: slevy1@pipeline.com
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Support negative indexes for arrays and
 strings
From: hello@apfelbox.net (Jannik Zschiesche)

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Am Sonntag, 2. September 2012 um 02:43 schrieb slevy1@pipeline.com:
> 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
> 
> The negative indexing provides a pleasurable way to easily access part of a string; it's simple and should be fast, too.
> 
> I think Easen's proposal is laudatory and I for one would like to see it happen for PHP and provide users with more ease and satisfaction in working with the language.
> 
> SL

Hi,

as I understood, a lot of people seem to have problems with this proposal, since arrays and strings could (and maybe should) behave the same.

The main problem arises from the ambiguity for $array[-1] for arrays.
But this is easily solvable: just introduce a slice operator.

$array[:-1] and the ambiguity is gone.


-- 
Cheers
Jannik Zschiesche



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