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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Safe Casting Functions
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

Marc Bennewitz wrote on 22/10/2014 20:12:
> On 22.10.2014 10:37, Bob Weinand wrote:
>> I know we have that already discussed a lot now, but I’d like to expose my points on the return value here:
>>
>> I imagine code like (supposing that we ever will have scalar typehints):
>>
>> function acceptsInt (int $i = null) {
>>      if ($i === null) {
>>          $i = 2 /* default value */;
>>      }
>>      /* do something with $i */
>> }
> NULL isn't a pointer for a default value - it's simply a type with no
> value - no more - no less.
>  From your example: why do you accept NULL if you need a integer default
> value?
>
> function acceptsInt (int $i = 2) { ...

Those are two distinct types of default:
- the default value to use when a programmer calls the function with 
fewer parameters (e.g. acceptsInt())
- the default value to use when a value is provided by the programmer, 
but turns out to be null at runtime (e.g. acceptsInt($_GET['foo']))