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Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 11:09:29 +0200
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To: Andi Gutmans <andi@zend.com>
Cc: Curt Zirzow <curt@php.net>, internals@lists.php.net
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Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Illegal use of string offset
From: cschneid@cschneid.com (Christian Schneider)

Andi Gutmans wrote:
> At 03:49 AM 4/27/2004 +0000, Curt Zirzow wrote:
>> $a = 'a string';
>> /* E_ERROR Cannot use string offset as an array */
>> echo is_array($a['bar']['baz']);
 >
> I made this change back in December.
> I guess I could revert back but I think it makes sense to be strict here.
> What does the rest think?

My feeling is that the is_*-functions should be forgiving as people 
*are* doing checks to ensure proper input values. To force a combination 
or isset and is_* seems to be the wrong thing to me. But I realize that 
the issue here happens because is_* are normal functions and the check 
is done beforehand. Nevertheless I'd prefer not to have to guard is_* 
with isset in my ideal PHP world :-)

On one hand it's not that important to me though as it only happens 
under rare circumstances. On the other hand it leads to very subtle BC 
problems as you can hit it depending on user input in a form if you use 
nested arrays there. So I'm 50:50 on reverting.

- Chris