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Date: Mon, 27 Jan 2014 16:19:07 +0000
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Organization: Parliament Hill Computers Ltd
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.20 (2009-12-10)
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] PHP and case-sensitivity inconsistency in PHP 6
From: addw@phcomp.co.uk (Alain Williams)

On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 03:57:01PM +0000, George Bond wrote:
> On 27 January 2014 11:05, Alain Williams <addw@phcomp.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> > On Sun, Jan 26, 2014 at 03:36:08PM -0800, Stas Malyshev wrote:
> > * there are a few special values that are currently case insenitive, eg:
> > NULL, TRUE.
> >   I would suggest that they only be recognised in upper case, eg: null
> > would be
> >   invalid. This fits with the meme of constant names being in upper case.
> >
> 
> Why would you want
> 
> FUNCTION tellMeEverythingIsOk(){
>     ECHO TRUE;
> }
> 
> to work but not
> 
> function tellMeEverythingIsOk(){
>     echo true;
> }

I am trying to raise the issue. Thanks for joining the discussion.

> ??  true/false/null aren't constants, they're language constructs like
> 'array' and 'callable' (and arguably 'function') - or at least they're part
> of the same group (base types) and would expect them to have the same case
> conventions. 

We want to do what breaks least code - while accepting that some code will become broken.

What I see in random code that I come across is: TRUE, true and True. Maybe we
should accept those and not things like 'tRue'.

> I wouldn't think anyone would want to enforce $var = ARRAY(
> 'foo' ); on the PHP world.

Agreed, I was not suggesting that.  It seems to be conventional that keywords
like 'function' should be in lower case, I was not aware that you could put it
in upper case (you can, I just tried), but all the documentation suggests that
it should be lower case.

> If we're enforcing case sensitivity with the true/false/null keywords, I'd
> expect 'true' to be the primitive type, 'TRUE' to be a constant that
> someone could define for some dubiously-sensible purpose (like having the
> value needed to be set in some database), and 'True' to be a class that
> someone could define for a slightly more sophisticated purpose ($t = new
> True(); try { $db->set( 'field', $t->getForDatabase() ); } catch { echo
> "Could not set field to {$t->getHumanReadable()} ).  

> But I don't see any
> reason to make true/false/null case sensitive (whichever canonical casing
> you then choose) in the first place.

It does make it consistent with the change towards case sensitivity in function names.

-- 
Alain Williams
Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256  http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
Parliament Hill Computers Ltd. Registration Information: http://www.phcomp.co.uk/contact.php
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