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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Combined Comparison (Spaceship) Operator
From: smalyshev@gmail.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

Hi!

> The operator is also less clear ... if I see "$a <=> $b" and do not happen
> to be familiar with another language implementing this operator, I won't

That can be said about every syntax construct - if you never seen it
before, you'd have to learn. <=> is used in Perl, Ruby and Groovy - so
it's not exactly unknown thing we've just invented, and if you've seen
it once, you'd never forget what it means. It has the form that
perfectly describes its function, so there's no real confusion here.

> have any idea what it does (the closest thing <=> could be is the
> equivalence operator from logic, and that's not the case here). On the
> other hand something like compare($a, $b) is pretty obvious. If there is
> concern about clashing with user-defined functions, lets namespace it.

So instead of $a <=> $b, you'd get something like
\PHP\compare_function($a, $b) or maybe even
\PHP\Ordering\compare_function? I don't think most people would prefer
the latter. Operators exist for a reason, and comparison is a frequent
enough case to make operator - especially one that has a long tradition
in other scripting languages - warranted.
-- 
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com