Hi Internals
I don't have permission to create RFCs but I would like to propose/discuss
new language construct called ifset() which is syntactic sugar to null
coalescing operator with rhs value null. The goal of this proposal is
similar to Andrea Fauld's proposal (
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/unary_null_coalescing_operator), and the chosen
keyword is similar to historical discussion ifsetor(). Here's an example.
$result = $a ?? null;
vs
$result = ifset($a);
$result = $a ?? $b ?? $c ?? $d ?? $e ?? null;
vs
$result = ifset($a, $b, $c, $d, $e);
As you can see ifset() does not make code much shorter but the main goal
of this syntax is expressiveness not shortness.
someFunc(
$arg1,
$arg2,
$longVariableName1 ?? $longVariableName2 ?? $longVariableName3 ?? null,
$arg4,
);
vs
someFunc(
$arg1,
$arg2,
ifset(
$longVariableName1,
$longVariableName2,
$longVariableName3,
),
$arg4,
);
I know that this proposal is highly unlikely to be accepted because it just
does same as ?? but in different way and it introduces new keyword (we
don't have any new keyword since yield in 5.5) and, furthermore, I did
search through github and found some projects using ifset as function
name (https://github.com/search?l=PHP&q=ifset&type=Code).
Here's the patch: https://github.com/webdevxp/php-src
Cheers