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Date: Fri, 22 Nov 2013 12:08:16 -0500
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To: Tjerk Meesters <tjerk.meesters@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Power function as operator
From: theanomaly.is@gmail.com (Sherif Ramadan)

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On Fri, Nov 22, 2013 at 11:58 AM, Tjerk Meesters
<tjerk.meesters@gmail.com>wrote:

> 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
>


I definitely like the idea of having pow as an operator. I've actually been
wanting to copy that from Python for a while. I'm all for it.

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