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Date: Mon, 9 Feb 2015 03:21:20 -0800
Cc: Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>,
 PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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To: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [VOTE] Scalar Type Hints
From: andigutmans@gmail.com (Andi Gutmans)

> On Feb 7, 2015, at 7:52 PM, Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@lerdorf.com> wrote:
>=20
> On 02/07/2015 09:51 PM, Andrea Faulds wrote:
>>> tan(1);
>>> echo strstr("test", "est", 1);
>>=20
>> Banning int->float and float->int is both a pain point and sometimes =
a life-saver. It=E2=80=99s annoying that tan(1) doesn=E2=80=99t work. On =
the other hand, you discover if your ints floats would be silently =
truncated (as I did with PictoSwap).
>>=20
>> I wouldn=E2=80=99t say that int->string not working is a problem, =
though. Seeing something like strstr(=E2=80=9Ctest=E2=80=9D, =E2=80=9Cest=E2=
=80=9D, 1); is rather confusing. Looking at it, I=E2=80=99d think the =
third parameter is some sort of number for you to want to pass an =
integer to it. If I want a string, I=E2=80=99ll use one.
>=20
> This isn't int->string. This is int->boolean. The 3rd arg to strstr() =
is
> a boolean and passing 1 instead of true makes it blow up. It is very
> very common for people to pass 0 or 1 in place of true/false to all
> sorts of things in PHP.


Thanks for those relevant examples.
I think it=E2=80=99s also worth emphasizing that in C people frequently =
work around this by forcing casts. The value of strict typing diminishes =
quickly and the code ends up being less readable.

I think in PHP this is going to be even more so due to the reasons =
Rasmus states. We have *a lot* of places like this which will lead to =
unnatural acts and code which is no more strict than it was before (just =
not as pretty).

Andi=