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Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 11:19:22 -0400
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To: =?UTF-8?Q?Pavel_Kou=C5=99il?= <pajousek@gmail.com>
Cc: Zeev Suraski <zeev@zend.com>, PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Naming of 'weak' type hints
From: ircmaxell@gmail.com (Anthony Ferrara)

Pavel,

> Hello,
>
> I would definitely stick with "weak"; it is common naming used across
> many languages and textbooks.
>
> Also, why is the strongly typed mode named "strict" anyways? If
> anything should change, it should be strict to strong, so PHP doesn't
> look like a special snowflake.

Strong has a very specific meaning, which PHP is not using. For
example, Python variables are strongly typed (meaning it's restrictive
about how types are intermingled). So while "x" + 3 in JavaScript
(another weakly typed language) is "x3", in python it would be a type
error (assuming "x" + 3).

PHP's overall type behavior is still weak at the variable level. The
difference is that strict type declarations require types to match at
the point of parameter passing. But it doesn't make the variable
strongly typed.

As far as "weak", that's the description of the type system in
general. However as far as type declarations are concerned, I think it
would be fair to talk about the two modes as "coercive" and "strict".

Anthony