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Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 20:38:50 -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] Re: rfc: pow-operator
From: theanomaly.is@gmail.com (Sherif Ramadan)

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On Sun, Nov 24, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Tjerk Meesters <tjerk.meesters@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
> 2. The available votes for the associativity is reduced to either right or
> non associative; I'd rather see it done right (pun intended) or done in a
> way whereby the developer must put parentheses to disambiguate.
>
>

Here's why I strongly oppose the non-associative option:

- No other language that I know of currently takes this approach with the
exponent operator
- PHP already has a bad wrap for making awkward language decisions that
only end up confusing or hurting the user in the long run -- and
unnecessarily so (see ternary for example -- we're the only language that
made that bad choice with respect to ternary's associativity and it's a
shameful mess)
- We have plenty of reason to follow suit with other languages (clearly the
majority of them found it more useful to have a right-associative exponent
operator)
- Note that some of these languages actually ended up changing their
exponent operator from left-associative to right-associative at one point
(Tlc for example)

I propose the vote only be for a right-associative exponent operator to
either be included or not included in the language. That is the only
sensible thing to vote on considering all the facts.

- Regards
Sherif -- The guy that just wants to get things done

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