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Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 17:56:39 +0300
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To: Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com>
Cc: Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>, Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com>, 
	"internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE][RFC] Scalar Type Hinting with Cast
From: narf@devilix.net (Andrey Andreev)

Hi,

As a userland guy, I'm against this one.

It seems a bit political ... A lot of people want either strict type
hints or type casting hints, but because the people on this list can't
get to agree on any of the two, this RFC tries to make a compromise
that, IMO, satisfies nobody. It's done not for the benefit of
everybody, but just so we can say that PHP has "scalar type hints".
I've said this in the RFC discussion thread: In order to satisfy both
sides, instead of arguing which is the one and true way, just
implement both.

That is also why I suggested altering the proposed syntax here from:

    function foo(int $bar)

to:

    function foo((int) $bar)

Whether it applies more strict rules or not, this RFC is clearly about
type _casting_ hints, while the used syntax has so far only been used
for strict type hints. I know some would argue that this is a side
effect because you can't cast to a specific class type, but that's not
the point - the result is a strict type hint and that's what people
are used to. This is both inconsistent AND prevents PHP from having
strict scalar type hints in the future (because of the used syntax).

I (and I'm sure many others) would love both features separately, not
a hacky mix between the two.

Cheers,
Andrey.