Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:94768
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain mudsite.com designates 209.85.223.175 as permitted sender)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2016 19:31:16 +0000
Message-ID: <CADVQu1S0FNSqM3AHL3X1_x6TgOKOPR7WxPUPYOLtMdfS_HtOaA@mail.gmail.com>
To: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=001a113946588de1f00538f3875f
Subject: [RFC] E_NOTICE for invalid array container
From: dave@mudsite.com (David Walker)

--001a113946588de1f00538f3875f
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Hi All,

I'm attempting to get involved and hack away at some internals; I figured
the best method to do this would be to pick up a bug and do my best at it.
So I grabbed #37676.  The issue asks to implement an E_(NOTICE|WARNING)
when attempting to access scalar values as arrays.  cmb alerted me to a
long thread that came up last year (
http://marc.info/?t=143379796900001&r=1&w=2).  I've read over it and the
couple of other PR's that attempted to resolve this issue.

As I read, the couple of major complaints about adding an E_NOTICE were
that multiple-accesses in a set (i.e. $a=false;$a[1][2][3];) would produce
too many errors.  Matt
<http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=143384434418881&w=2> raised this
issue, in addition to it only being raised for non-null issues; having NULL
be an 'identity' of sort that any array access on a NULL is NULL.  I agree
with him in part, and oppose in others.  I think that original access to a
NULL should be treated as accessing any scalar value, however I do agree
that multiple notices would be bad.  Rowan
<http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=143385309121593&w=2> has also
presented his thoughts to the same, and this implementation takes into
account his solution where we don't raise much.

Christoph <http://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=143385339521672&w=2> countered
that: ```$o->foo->bar``` would itself raise two notices rather than one.  I
would present that that behavior should be pruned itself. Object access on
a null should alert, but subsequent calls ought not to (I don't know how to
prevent that, but then again I haven't learned).


So I want to solicit for more discussion given previous talks.  My
first-attempt RFC for this is at:
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/notice-for-non-valid-array-container

--
Dave

ps: this is my first attempt here at an RFC solo, and preemptively
apologize if anything deviates from the norm too far, did my best to follow
all them how-to's.

--001a113946588de1f00538f3875f--