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Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2014 13:35:52 +0200
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To: Xen <xen@dds.nl>
Cc: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] not_null function
From: pierre.php@gmail.com (Pierre Joye)

hi,

On Thu, Jul 3, 2014 at 11:40 AM, Xen <xen@dds.nl> wrote:

> But a line like "if (!is_null($a))" feels like there are two verbs in it.
>
> It is like you are saying "if $a is not is null".
>
> It is different for the "empty" function because there is no "is_" prefix in
> it. So "if (!empty($a)) feels completely sane.
>
> So generally I will *want* to test a null condition but I just hope my
> variable won't contain anything that evaluates to false and just test "if
> ($a)".

that's why we have is_null, and NULL is a type, not a value btw.

also isset is an operator, not a function. (referred in other replies).


> If there was a not_null() I would use that instead, because "if
> (not_null($a))" only contains one "verb" instead of two.


> And I would define that helper function myself, but I don't want to write
> code that another person would not be able to run just because not_null is
> not defined in his library.

is_null is consistent with the other is_* functions. A programming
language is not a natural language so grammatical or semantic
imperfections are totally valid.

between the is_* functions, isset or ?:, I do not see a need to add
the exact same features for a non technical reason.

Cheers,
-- 
Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org