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Message-ID: <4D5D4A6D-1E94-4893-B1DF-7A8C616C871A@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2015 01:15:41 -0800
To: "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: PHP7 Coalesce operator
From: shadda@gmail.com (shadda)

Hey all. Been a while since I popped into this list. You may remember me =
from such emails as =E2=80=9CWhy god can=E2=80=99t we have =
namespaces=E2=80=9D, or =E2=80=9Cso we=E2=80=99re still not fixing =
strpos, eh?=E2=80=9D

I had a question-suggestion based around the cool new operator we=E2=80=99=
re getting in PHP7, the ?? operator, which as I understand it is the =
functional equivalent to perl=E2=80=99s // operator; in that they both =
test for whether or not a variable is defined, rather than it=E2=80=99s =
truthiness.=20

That=E2=80=99s all well and good, but one of the things that makes the =
|| operator in javascript so handy is that definedness and truthiness go =
hand in hand, and an undefined value will simply evaluate to null/false, =
making things like (foo || false || true) possible, which is quite handy =
in a lot of situations. It seems like if we already have a construct in =
place that=E2=80=99ll bypass raising an E_NOTICE, it should possible to =
implement a secondary operator that tests for truthiness with similar =
semantics.

Something like, $config->auto_play =3D $config->auto_play ?! =
$defaults->auto_play ?! false;

Do you feel me? Guys?

-M=