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Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2015 12:43:44 -0400
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To: Levi Morrison <levim@php.net>
Cc: Anatol Belski <anatol.php@belski.net>, Ferenc Kovacs <tyra3l@gmail.com>, 
	Dan Ackroyd <danack@basereality.com>, =?UTF-8?B?SmFrdWIgS3Viw63EjWVr?= <kelerest123@gmail.com>, 
	Dmitry Stogov <dmitry@zend.com>, Bob Weinand <bobwei9@hotmail.com>, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me>, 
	PHP Internals <internals@lists.php.net>, Nikita Popov <nikita.ppv@gmail.com>, 
	Aaron Piotrowski <aaron@icicle.io>, Kalle Sommer Nielsen <kalle@php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=047d7b3a82ace204ad051a379b4c
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Re: Revert unapproved language change, was: Fix
 division by zero to throw exception (round 2)
From: theanomaly.is@gmail.com (Sherif Ramadan)

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On Sun, Jul 5, 2015 at 4:39 PM, Levi Morrison <levim@php.net> wrote:

>
>
> I just want to chime in and say that I have a contributed to a popular
> application written in C that actually uses division by zero in a
> useful manner. I feel like the rest of you think this is solely a
> programmer error, and wanted to chime in to reiterate that this is not
> the case. I would be in favor of removal of the error/warning and
> *especially* would be against an exception for division by zero.
> Division by zero as defined by IEEE 754 is actually useful which is
> why it is often followed instead of sticking to a strict mathematical
> definition where it is an error.
>
> I understand that some people are just upset about the
> timing/discussion, which is possibly understandable - I have been too
> busy lately to follow anything so I don't know. I just wanted to jump
> in here and clarify the usefulness of what was actually changed.
>

IEEE 754 is useful, I agree. The warning is also useful, because it helps
the programmer find their mistake more easily. It gives you a file name and
line number to look for. We have to remember that PHP is being used by a
wide array of people with varying skillsets and expertise. Not all of them
know what IEEE 754 is or even how to prevent division by zero. When they
don't debugging the code that results in a division by zero means having to
learn those things first. We're lowering the bar by just handing them the
useful debug information. So removing the warning makes no sense. Having a
warning in your error log screams at you that you potentially have a bug
here and PHP shines a light on it for you so that you can  either fix it or
refactor the code to not result in this potentially buggy behavior.

I don't think the point of this discussion was to discuss which is more
useful, the warning or the error/exception. My immediate concern for
raising this issue, initially, was that we suddenly ended up in a place
where we had neither a warning nor an error, thereby leaving the user with
no useful debug information whatsoever. No indication that there is
potentially buggy code. That's bad. That should not have happened.

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