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Date: Sat, 11 Mar 2017 15:23:16 +0200
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To: "internals@lists.php.net" <internals@lists.php.net>
Cc: Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [Discussion] is_string(), string type and objects
 implementing __toString()
From: narf@devilix.net (Andrey Andreev)

On Sat, Mar 11, 2017 at 1:39 PM, Fleshgrinder <php@fleshgrinder.com> wrote:
> On 3/10/2017 11:57 AM, Andrey Andreev wrote:
>> Yes, they're valid string values, but the examples I gave were meant
>> to show that context can make them predictably invalid, and hence why
>> strict typing is desirable.
>
> I am totally in favor of strict types, but having a union of some type
> and having the ability to constraint to it is strict. The union of
> bool|int|float|null|string is stricter than the super type mixed. That's
> the whole point of having a stringable.
>

We already have an unambiguous name for that: scalar

> On 3/10/2017 4:11 PM, Andrey Andreev wrote:
>> You don't, but I do care at times.
>
> Sorry, but your example makes no sense at all. Just because you got an
> int does not even remotely mean that one of those constants was used.

I'm sorry, I thought I wouldn't have to explicitly state that of
course I don't know a constant was used ... "constant" is not a type.
The important thing is that I know a constant was *not* used.

Apparently, I am bad at examples, but take a look at sort().

Yes, even after I validate the $sort_flags values, I would never know
if you passed int(1) or SORT_NUMERIC.
However, knowing that no sane developer writes sort($array, 1), I can
very reasonably tell you that the following is an error:

    $foo = '1';
    sort($array, $foo);

And the mere existence of SORT_FLAG_CASE makes it that much important
that an error is triggered, as now my logic would be built with
bitwise operations and I can't just check for one of X values.
Ironically enough, the following code executes silently:

    $array = ['a', 'b', 'c'];
    sort($array, '2234234324');

If you don't see the problem with that, I guess it does make "no sense
at all" from your POV. Just agree to disagree.

Cheers,
Andrey.