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Cc: =?utf-8?Q?Johannes_Schl=C3=BCter?= <johannes@schlueters.de>,
 Mathias Grimm <mathiasgrimm@gmail.com>,
 "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 18:21:48 -0700
To: Mike Willbanks <pencap@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] ArrayPath
From: mtdowling@gmail.com (Michael Dowling)

> This request seems to be more in the realm of having XPath type support fo=
r
> arrays, likewise people have also attempted to do this with JSON.  It does=

> seem like it could be valuable to some degree, however, I don't necessaril=
y
> believe it belongs in the core.  This seems much better for a PECL module
> if necessary.
>=20
> If the key has a / it would seem like you should escape it like a regular
> string escape, aka "\/".  I'm not convinced this is something that is
> necessary in PHP either.  There does not seem to be a great use case for
> this use.


I agree that this definitely does not belong in core.

This has been tried with json via json-path, but there's no formal grammar o=
r compliance test suite to back it. It's basically a really old blog post th=
at has never been formalized. There's a much more robust alternative called j=
mespath that works across multiple languages and has a PHP implementation: h=
ttps://github.com/mtdowling/jmespath.php

I think this shows that this is a problem that can and has already been solv=
ed in user land (multiple times in multiple ways), and it can be done in a p=
erformant way (e.g., compiling expressions into PHP code). I don't see a nee=
d to add bloat to PHP's core for this.

-Michael