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Date: Sun, 06 Nov 2016 20:22:49 +0100
To: PHP Internals List <internals@lists.php.net>
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Subject: Binary string forward compatibility removal
From: mail@pmmaga.net (=?UTF-8?Q?Pedro_Magalh=C3=A3es?=)

Hi internals,

I've created a PR (https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/2187) aiming at 
the removal of the binary string forward compatibility.

Reproducing the description of the PR:
----
In version 5.2.1, the b prefix and the (binary) cast were introduced for 
forward compatibility with the PHP6 project. As it is known, that 
project never came to be. However, these are still accepted by the 
language scanner although ignored from then on.

This PR aims at removing those as they are naturally confusing given 
that they are simply ignored or, in the case of the cast, the same as 
casting to string.

However, I've separated this PR in 2 commits because the removal of the 
(binary) cast will bring a more serious BC break issue: On the PHAR 
extension, the current default stub for PHAR's makes use of the binary 
cast. I've removed it from the default stub and fixed the tests that 
made use of it but this means that the old PHARs that make use of this 
default stub will be broken.

What seemed to be a simple task actually turned out to be far more 
complex given the number of tests that were written with this forward 
compatibility in mind.

I would be happy to transform this into an RFC if you think it would be 
appropriate.
----

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Best regards,
Pedro Magalhães