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Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 10:57:29 -0700
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To: Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Argument unpacking
From: aharvey@php.net (Adam Harvey)

On 30 August 2013 08:23, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com> wrote:
> The syntax it introduces looks as follows:
>
>     $db->query($query, ...$params);

Somebody was going to do this, and it's going to be me. Sorry. We were
doing so well.

I don't like the ellipsis. I could just about deal with it for the
variadic RFC, since it's at least not worlds away from C++ (and there
are other precedents for it, as you noted), but it looks really weird
to me as the splat operator. It looks like you're hesitant to call the
function or ashamed of $params rather than unpacking something.

I know there's a symbol soup issue for by-ref variadic arguments, as
you mentioned in the RFC, but I think that's an unusual enough use
case that * is still the better option =E2=80=94 it doesn't break the flow =
of
the code as much as a three character operator, and while it's no more
visually intuitive than ..., it does have the advantage of being what
Python and Ruby used.

I'm raising this in this thread because I'm more concerned about the
visual impact of it here, but obviously whatever we use as the
operator for one is what we should use for the other, assuming both
RFCs are accepted.

Adam, who is wincing as he sends this at the likely subthread that will ens=
ue.