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Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 11:21:45 +0000
Cc: Julien Pauli <jpauli@php.net>,
 PHP Internals List <internals@lists.php.net>
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To: Andrey Andreev <narf@devilix.net>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Scalar Type Hints v0.2
From: ajf@ajf.me (Andrea Faulds)

Hi Andrey,

> On 14 Jan 2015, at 11:10, Andrey Andreev <narf@devilix.net> wrote:
>=20
> I don't understand why it should be a bad thing that the API author
> forces rules on the consumer. The opposite is IMO fundamental to the
> concept of an API - the rules specified by the author are a contract
> that the consumer agrees to, and which allows for the whole thing to
> work properly.
>=20
> In this form, I don't get any benefit from strict type checks, because
> I only want them so that writing foo(int $bar) guarantees me that the
> caller *passed* an integer. Instead, I'd have to NOT use a type hint,
> and instead do an is_int($bar) check inside ... this beats the whole
> purpose.

Why? What is wrong with a caller choosing to use weak type hints? Either =
way you receive an integer.

> This caller-controlled switch very much reminds me of
> mbstring.func_overload, which I didn't care much for, until one day I
> saw how it breaks all crypto code that authors had otherwise written
> very carefully.
>=20
> I prefer Julien's (int) $weak vs. int $strong syntax better (which is
> what I've always wanted), but I don't care much if it's a declare()
> statement, just as long as the author controls the behavior.
> And while I'm on that - thank you for this proposal (specifically the
> 0.2 version), Andrea. Finally an RFC that allows both weak and strict
> scalar type checks instead of the "can't go in both directions"
> nonsense that has blocked this feature for years.

I don=E2=80=99t like going in both directions if I=E2=80=99ll have to =
deal with both at the same time. I want consistency. Either everything =
weak or everything strict. That=E2=80=99s why I like this approach. At =
least within a single file, everything will follow the same approach, =
rather than it being mix-and-match.

--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/