Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:80850
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: error (pb1.pair.com: domain kelunik.com from 81.169.146.221 cause and error)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 01:42:57 +0100
Message-ID: <CANUQDCgq5hPEk=dMg8enSLrxAdmLqHRJoKXB0rkhNff+KbaUag@mail.gmail.com>
To: internals@lists.php.net
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=f46d0443066e8c5605050cf69add
Subject: in Operator
From: me@kelunik.com (Niklas Keller)

--f46d0443066e8c5605050cf69add
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Hello,

I'd like to propose a new feature to PHP: The in Operator
Bob mentioned a few weeks ago he wants such an operator in PHP and today I
stumbled over
http://nikic.github.io/2012/07/27/How-to-add-new-syntactic-features-to-PHP.html
again,
which uses the in operator as a sample.

Use cases:

$obj = new StdClass;
$obj->prop = "value";
$languages = ["PHP", "C", "Java"];
var_dump("PHP" in $languages); // true
var_dump("Python" in $languages); // false
var_dump(0 in $languages); // false
var_dump("0x0" in ["0e3"]); // false
var_dump("prop" in $obj); // true
var_dump("foo" in $obj); // false
var_dump("Hello" in "Hello World!"); // true

For strings, it would replace `strpos("Hello World!", "Hello") !== false)`,
for arrays it would replace `in_array($needle, $haystack, true)`
and for objects it would be a replacement of property_exists($class,
$property)`.

This change would mainly be syntax sugar, but I think it's worth because:
 * `"0x0" in ["0e3"]` would return false while `in_array("0x0", ["0e3"])`
returns true, that's probably an edge case, but there may be a lot of
people that don't use the `$strict` parameter, see http://3v4l.org/0K7E5
 * It would solve the issue that it's hard to remember the order of the
arguments for in_array and strpos, just had to look it up again.

Bob would volunteer to implement that feature.

Best Regards
Niklas Keller

--f46d0443066e8c5605050cf69add--