Is it a good idea to have a "strict" mode?

10 years ago by cesar@rodas.me — view source — reply

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Hi!

I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to have a strict mode in PHP.
Many language have them and it is a good idea.

I think it should be a bit different in PHP, it should encourage the
following things:

Avoid deprecated things, it should throw an exception.
Avoid explicit conversions of undefined constants to strings.
Anything else that could make run-time slower or bad practice.

"use strict";

var_dump(FOOBAR); // should throw an exception, undefined constant.

Good idea?

Cheers,

César D. Rodas
Open Source developer
+595-983-161124
PGP: F9ED A265 A3AB C8A1 D145 7368 158A 0336 C707 0AA6

10 years ago by Yasuo Ohgaki — view source — reply

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Hi Cesar,

I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to have a strict mode in PHP.
Many language have them and it is a good idea.

I think it should be a bit different in PHP, it should encourage the
following things:

Avoid deprecated things, it should throw an exception.

Avoid explicit conversions of undefined constants to strings.

Anything else that could make run-time slower or bad practice.
"use strict";

var_dump(FOOBAR); // should throw an exception, undefined constant.

We have error_reporting INI for this purpose.
Users may be strict or lazy for errors by the INI setting.

Regards,

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
yohgaki@ohgaki.net

10 years ago by Florian Anderiasch — view source — reply

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Hi Cesar,
I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to have a strict mode in PHP.
Many language have them and it is a good idea.

I think it should be a bit different in PHP, it should encourage the
following things:

Avoid deprecated things, it should throw an exception.

Avoid explicit conversions of undefined constants to strings.

Anything else that could make run-time slower or bad practice.
"use strict";

var_dump(FOOBAR); // should throw an exception, undefined constant.
We have error_reporting INI for this purpose.
Users may be strict or lazy for errors by the INI setting.

I don't think it's a good idea to have a strict mode at all. I'd prefer
any language to be strict and unambiguous enough from the start. Adding
strict mode after the fact is just a band aid. PHP's error reporting
level isn't that bad, but if you're ignoring legacy code there's hardly
a reason not to develop to the strictest standard possible.

~Florian

10 years ago by Andrea Faulds — view source — reply

unread

Hi,

Hi Cesar,
I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to have a strict mode in PHP.
Many language have them and it is a good idea.

I think it should be a bit different in PHP, it should encourage the
following things:

Avoid deprecated things, it should throw an exception.

Avoid explicit conversions of undefined constants to strings.

Anything else that could make run-time slower or bad practice.
"use strict";

var_dump(FOOBAR); // should throw an exception, undefined constant.
We have error_reporting INI for this purpose.
Users may be strict or lazy for errors by the INI setting.
I don't think it's a good idea to have a strict mode at all. I'd prefer
any language to be strict and unambiguous enough from the start. Adding
strict mode after the fact is just a band aid. PHP's error reporting
level isn't that bad, but if you're ignoring legacy code there's hardly
a reason not to develop to the strictest standard possible.

~Florian

--

I agree. Use error handlers.

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

10 years ago by Julien Pauli — view source — reply

unread

Hi!

I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to have a strict mode in PHP.
Many language have them and it is a good idea.

I think it should be a bit different in PHP, it should encourage the
following things:

Avoid deprecated things, it should throw an exception.

Avoid explicit conversions of undefined constants to strings.

Anything else that could make run-time slower or bad practice.
"use strict";

var_dump(FOOBAR); // should throw an exception, undefined constant.
Good idea?

This has already been debated.

Use error_reporting instead. If you write "use strict;" in PHP, you'll hit
a meaningful error message btw ;-)

Also, syntax checks, etc... is the job of your IDE.
Mine already tells me many things about unused variables, etc...

Julien P

10 years ago by Martin Keckeis — view source — reply

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You might get more approval for: declare(strict=1);

I would like to see this to help catch typeos in variable names. If a
variable
is assigned and it does not already exist some sort of error would be
raised.
The inspiration of this is from Perl where 'use strict' does this.

How to declare a variable ? The keyword 'var' exists, it is only used in
classes
but could be used to declare variables in functions and at the top level.

Thus:

declare(strict=1);

var $foo; // Declared but not given a value - so give it NULL
var $bar = 1;

$foo = 234;

$baz = 10; // This would error - $baz is a typeo for $bar

You can achieve that already quiet simple
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);

set_error_handler(function($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline){
throw new \Exception($errstr);
});

$a = $b;

10 years ago by Alain Williams — view source — reply

unread

You might get more approval for: declare(strict=1);

I would like to see this to help catch typeos in variable names. If a
variable
is assigned and it does not already exist some sort of error would be
raised.
The inspiration of this is from Perl where 'use strict' does this.

How to declare a variable ? The keyword 'var' exists, it is only used in
classes
but could be used to declare variables in functions and at the top level.

Thus:

declare(strict=1);

var $foo; // Declared but not given a value - so give it NULL
var $bar = 1;

$foo = 234;

$baz = 10; // This would error - $baz is a typeo for $bar

You can achieve that already quiet simple
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);

set_error_handler(function($errno, $errstr, $errfile, $errline){
throw new \Exception($errstr);
});

$a = $b;

That catches the use of an undefined variable $b.

What I am talking about is assignment to an undeclared variable $baz (or $a).
This is not caught by your code - PHP does not have a concept of declaring
variables.

--
Alain Williams
Linux/GNU Consultant - Mail systems, Web sites, Networking, Programmer, IT Lecturer.
+44 (0) 787 668 0256 http://www.phcomp.co.uk/
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