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Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2015 16:46:42 -0400
Cc: Sean Coates <sean@seancoates.com>, Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>,
        Leigh <leight@gmail.com>, PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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To: Alex Bowers <bowersbros@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] RFC - Array slice syntactic sugar
From: jbafford@zort.net (John Bafford)


On Mar 20, 2015, at 16:27, Alex Bowers <bowersbros@gmail.com> wrote:

> On 20 March 2015 at 20:10, Sean Coates <sean@seancoates.com> wrote:
>=20
>> That=92s no different than `@` being invalid because it=92s already =
in use.
>=20
>=20
> The syntax would be [*from:to], which would currently throw a parse =
error
> (since asterisk is required to be placed between two numbers), so this
> would be different.
>=20
> Alternatively, an underscore could be used
>=20
> This would then look like [_from:to]
>=20
> Also, another option would be to not use the square bracket syntax at =
all,
> and move towards angled brackets for positional indexing.
>=20
> This would then be $array<1:2> to get items in positions 1 and 2.

$array<1:2> could be confusing to parse (if not confusing to read) =
because of ambiguity with the existing < and > operators. For example:

	$foo ? $bar<1:2> 3

is currently valid syntax, and means

	$foo ? ($bar < 1) : (2 > 3)

So there is probably some complex nesting of ?: and <:> that is entirely =
ambiguous.

Not necessarily saying it can=92t be done, but I think we should =
probably avoid syntax with a significant chance of causing mental parse =
errors.

-John