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Date: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 00:58:02 +0800
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Subject: Power function as operator
From: tjerk.meesters@gmail.com (Tjerk Meesters)

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Hi,

To challenge myself I had tasked myself to introduce a new operator and
opcode to the language; now that I'm done with it, I wanted to measure the
response on the list to actually get it merged before writing an RFC.

My work can be found here:
https://github.com/datibbaw/php-src/compare/pow-operator

It introduces the pow() function as an operator ** (double asterisk), as
can be found in languages such as Python (with perhaps the notable
difference that it's right associative there).

The logic gets exposed via the ZEND_POW opcode and all the logic that went
into pow() itself is copied into it. The exceptions are that an expression
such as [] ** 2 (squared empty array) will cause a fatal error because the
operands are incompatible, whereas pow([], 2) would give 0.

Why this operator? Basically because:
1) it's shorter (the keyboard rejoices).
2) it's faster (no ZEND_CALL).
3) it's found in other languages too.

I've only implemented one of the test suites; there are quite a few for
just one function, but when needed I can add those others as well.

Btw, changes to vld aren't pushed yet.

Let me know!

-- 
--
Tjerk

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