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Date: Fri, 4 Jul 2014 15:26:44 -0600
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To: Xen <xen@dds.nl>
Cc: internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] not_null function
From: levim@php.net (Levi Morrison)

On Fri, Jul 4, 2014 at 2:27 PM, Xen <xen@dds.nl> wrote:
> Op Fri, 04 Jul 2014 14:34:17 +0200 schreef Robert Stoll <php@tutteli.ch>:
>
>
>> [Robert Stoll]
>>
>> I really like how ruby tackles this problem with the syntactic sugar
>> "unless" which basically is a substitute for "if( !() )".
>> Maybe we could consider to introduce it in PHP next? It is very natural to
>> read "unless(is_null($x))" an much nicer than "if(!is_null($x)" IMO. And it
>> would not only solve your issue with is_null but is_Xy functions/methods in
>> general.
>
>
> I think that is just flawless. Thank you SO much for suggesting this.

For completeness, it is available in Perl and I believe Perl had it
first; not completely sure though.


> Because you still have the cross-contamination between isset and is_null.
> People wrongly use "isset" to test for "is set and is not null". So you
> would have to keep is_null as meaning "if it is not set or (if it is set)
> it is null".
>
> "unless (is_null())" would then mean "unless (!isset || is_null)" but it
> would definitely be better than abusing isset for this.

I don't think changing isset would be beneficial, sadly. I wish it
only checked that a variable exists and didn't do the not null check
but it's used very, very widely.