[VOTE] Uniform Variable Syntax

1. "The current patch introduces a new “write context” issue. Namely
   ($foo)['bar'] = 'baz' will not behave this same was as $foo['bar'] =
   'baz'. In the former case an undefined variable notice will be thrown
   if $foo does not exist, whereas the latter does not throw a notice."

2. "As these changes only apply to some very rarely used syntax, the
   breakage seems acceptable for PHP 6."

I don't think we should introduce a new thing which is not perfect or
"confused".. it looks like we fixed a mess with a new mess.

it make me think we should : "don't fix it until it is broken”

We are fixing what is broken here; the variable syntax is counter-intuitive at the moment, and they make the syntax more consistent overall.

Also, parentheses in PHP are always a source of issues. I don’t think they’ll ever quite work properly unless we switch to using an AST-based parser someday.

then we won't need to temporarily fix it..

anyway, it's just my 2 cents

thanks

--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/

--
Laruence Xinchen Hui
http://www.laruence.com/

Hey:

1. "The current patch introduces a new “write context” issue. Namely
   ($foo)['bar'] = 'baz' will not behave this same was as $foo['bar'] =
   'baz'. In the former case an undefined variable notice will be thrown
   if $foo does not exist, whereas the latter does not throw a notice."

2. "As these changes only apply to some very rarely used syntax, the
   breakage seems acceptable for PHP 6."

I don't think we should introduce a new thing which is not perfect or
"confused".. it looks like we fixed a mess with a new mess.

it make me think we should : "don't fix it until it is broken”

We are fixing what is broken here; the variable syntax is counter-intuitive at the moment, and they make the syntax more consistent overall.

Also, parentheses in PHP are always a source of issues. I don’t think they’ll ever quite work properly unless we switch to using an AST-based parser someday.

I've change my opinion.....

I will vote for yes...

thanks

--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/

--
Laruence Xinchen Hui
http://www.laruence.com/

I've just voted "no" for this, because it introduces a tiny BC break.
Now, I realize this is a tiny BC break, but it is just those that
drive people nuts when upgrading. There is so much non-public code - a
cursor check of Symfony and ZF is not representative.

It is a tiny BC break and it’s for PHP NEXT (i.e 6 or 7), not 5.6. Why not? It’s a tiny change which will bother some people but make everyone else’s life easier.

Voted +1, obviously for having that in php6, not 5.7. This tiny BC is
then more than OK.

Cheers,

Pierre

@pierrejoye | http://www.libgd.org

Derick mentioned in his blogpost(
http://derickrethans.nl/uniform-variable-syntax.html) that "You can't
really write a scanner for it, as the code could already have been
converted.”.

Of course what he said was true, but I’m not sure it’s important. If you scan your code before converting, or you revert to where you were prior to conversion (any project with proper version control should be able to do this) and then scan it, it’s going to work.

--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/

Hi Ferenc,

Hi internals!

I've started the vote on the Uniform Variable Syntax RFC:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/uniform_variable_syntax#vote

You can review the discussion about this RFC here:

http://markmail.org/message/mr4ihbubfbdxygci

The vote requires a 2/3 majority and is planned to end on 2014-07-14. The
RFC targets PHP 6.

The vote closed with 30 in favor and 1 against, as such the RFC is
accepted.

I will delay merging the patch until the situation regarding phpng and PHP
6 is more clear.

Thanks,
Nikita

Hi Nikita,

Derick mentioned in his blogpost(
http://derickrethans.nl/uniform-variable-syntax.html) that "You can't
really write a scanner for it, as the code could already have been
converted.".
I know that you posted https://gist.github.com/nikic/ffd019ef78b72934c7cc
which uses PhpParser\Lexer from your PHP-Parser project, so my
understanding was that it is possible to detect those expressions with both
the current php stable version and with the new one containing the
uniform_variable_syntax changes.

the point Derick was trying to make is that you can’t build a scanner that automatically checks whether you rewrote this particular piece of code already or not.
You can find the code pieces which match the constructs affected by the BC, but the scanner can’t decide, whether they are already fixed (= they are ok as they stand).

Which makes the burden of the update smaller, but you still need to check every match yourself, whether it will (still) work.

(at least I read it like this)

Cheers
Jannik

--
Ferenc Kovács
@Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu