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Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2015 16:50:47 +0000
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To: Matthew Leverton <leverton@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Scalar Type Hints v0.2
From: ajf@ajf.me (Andrea Faulds)

Hi Matthew,

> On 2 Feb 2015, at 16:45, Matthew Leverton <leverton@gmail.com> wrote:
>=20
> On Sun, Feb 1, 2015 at 5:49 PM, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote:
>> Good evening,
>>=20
>> The RFC has been updated to cover return types, since Levi=E2=80=99s =
Return Types RFC has passed. The patch is a work in progress: it works, =
but lacks tests for return types.
>>=20
>> Version 0.3 of the RFC can be found here: =
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/scalar_type_hints
>>=20
> After thinking and talking this over, I do think your RFC is the only
> option that makes sense *if* you want to support both weak and strict.
> However, I think the usage of declare() makes it dead in the water.
> Fair or not, I have a hard time looking past that.

Ah, that=E2=80=99s unfortunate. I know declare() is ugly and a little =
unwieldy, but I can=E2=80=99t see another way to do it which doesn=E2=80=99=
t cause bigger problems. I am convinced that if this RFC passed, people =
would probably get used to declare(). IDEs and command-line tools do =
exist.

> I'm opposed to other compromises because I think it will be a big mess
> from the caller's perspective. (Some functions would be strict, some
> would not ... eventually forcing everybody to just use strict types.)
> And, as I've stated previously, I prefer strict types.

That=E2=80=99s how I feel as well.

> Does the implementation of strict-only work for testing right now? (If
> so, what branch is it on, etc?) It's easy for everybody to theorize
> about how this would work, but why not actually take the time to
> "strictify" some part of a commonly used library and see how it
> actually works in practice? But a library with type-hints + a script
> to prepend "use strict" to every PHP file would make testing impact on
> real-world usage easy for anybody.

The implementation does work for testing. I still need to write tests =
for return types but they seem to work. Parameter types are =
fully-working, though, and they have extensive tests, so I know =
they=E2=80=99re working fine and you could add them to an existing =
project.

Strictifying an existing library is a good idea. I=E2=80=99ll try =
=E2=80=9Cstrictifying=E2=80=9D one of my bigger personal projects =
(PictoSwap, a 3DS browser application with a PHP backend) and see how it =
goes. I expect it=E2=80=99ll be fairly smooth, we=E2=80=99ll see.

Thanks for your thoughts.
--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/