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Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2015 21:55:22 +0400
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To: Paul Dragoonis <dragoonis@gmail.com>
Cc: PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>, 
	Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] What do we need strict scalar type hints for?
From: dmitry@zend.com (Dmitry Stogov)

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On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 7:47 PM, Paul Dragoonis <dragoonis@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Dmitry,
>
> It's preferred to have flexible scalars, that way we can interchange
> between a numerical string or an integer.
>
> Over defining on such things loses the powerfulness of PHP. So scalar
> typehints are detrimental rather than useful. Saying something is a scalar
> or not, is useful however! :)
>
> A use case would be where scalar type hints are detrimental are:
>
> I implement an API that returns integers for entity ids, like 2,3,4,5,6.
> and my web-frontend handles this fine because it's a scalar. Then, you want
> to convert entity ids to  UUID. This would break your entire web frontend
> application since it's no longer "integer" whereas the concept of $id is
> good enough.
>

I don't think this is a good case where strict type hinting is really
helpful.


>
> Did this make sense?
>
> TL;DR - I am against such proposals.
>

Now, I'm more interested in opinions of people who like strict type hinting.
I prefer weak hints, that follow standard conversion rules, but may be good
arguments may change my mind.

Thanks. Dmitry.


>
> Many thanks,
> Paul
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 at 9:12 AM, Dmitry Stogov <dmitry@zend.com> wrote:
>
>> hi,
>>
>> could you please write down few use cases, when strict scalar type hints
>> are really useful.
>>
>> Thanks. Dmitry.
>>
>
>

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