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Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:16:34 -0700
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To: Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Functions for getting long / double from zval with casts
From: morrison.levi@gmail.com (Levi Morrison)

On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 8:15 AM, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi internals!
>
> It happens quite often that you need to extract an integer from a zval and
> you also want it to work for integers in strings, etc. In order to do so
> you currently have to cast the zval to integer. This is always rather
> complicated because you often don't want to actually change the passed
> zval. So you end up allocating / separating zvals and stuff like that. And
> I'm always confused just which exactly of the 50 different ways to cast a
> zval one should use in a particular situation.
>
> What I'd like to propose is a set of two new functions, which castingly get
> an integer or a float from a zval. The functions could look like this:
>
>     long zval_get_long_with_cast(zval *value)
>     double zval_get_double_with_cast(zval *value)
>
> What do you think?
>
> Nikita

I'm new to internals but this is one thing I've dealt with.  I would
certain vote for it.

Question: how does this handle objects, arrays and resources?  For a
particular use-case I need something that works on integers and
integers in strings only.