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Cc: "S.A.N" <ua.san.alex@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <56BDF26B.8030301@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2016 14:55:39 +0000
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC][VOTE] Allow specifying keys in list()
From: rowan.collins@gmail.com (Rowan Collins)

S.A.N wrote on 12/02/2016 14:39:
> 2016-02-12 16:27 GMT+02:00 Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>:
>> S.A.N wrote on 12/02/2016 13:37:
>>> Often all keys are unknown, or a very lot keys, use list(...) - is unreal.
>>>
>>> I would like to, instead <?php
>>>
>>> foreach($params as $key => $value)
>>> {
>>>    $this{$key} = $value
>>> }
>>>
>>> Use the short syntax sugar <?php
>>>
>>> $this += $params
>>>
>>> ?>
>>>
>>> It's really do?
>>>
>> If the keys are unknown, then you probably don't want to blindly copy them
>> onto object properties; at that point, you might as well just have
>> $this->data and leave them as an array. It sounds like what you actually
>> want is an object literal syntax - i.e. $params should never have been an
>> array in the first place.
>>
> I would operator (+=) as like to function Object.assign()
> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Object/assign

Sure, but I was thinking more in terms of whether this is a strong use 
case for having it. In JS, "Object" is the appropriate type for an 
arbitrary hash of key-value pairs. In PHP,  the appropriate type for 
such a structure is "array", which already supports the + operator and 
array_merge function.

Note that the method you linked doesn't copy from an array onto an 
object, it copies from one object to another. Doing the same in PHP 
leaves the question of how you create the right-hand object, which is 
why I mentioned "object literal syntax", i.e. the ability to write 
something like "{ a => 42, b => 'Hello' }" or "new Foo { a => 42, b => 
'Hello' }" to define an object with directly-specified property values, 
rather than running the constructor.

The constructor example using list() syntax is deliberately naming the 
fields we're interested in, because it's populating an object of a 
particular class, with known property names, not dynamically creating 
arbitrary property keys.

Regards,
-- 
Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]