Reclassify E_STRICT notices

I would like to propose reclassifying our few existing E_STRICT notices and
removing this error category:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reclassify_e_strict

As we don't really have good guidelines on when which type of error should
be thrown, I'm mainly going by what category other similar errors use. I'm
open to suggestions, but hope this will not deteriorate into total bikeshed.

At last something which fits my roadmap ...

Only problem is '"Redefining" a constructor' which I certainly accept
while upgrading code, but I also appreciate why 'Remove PHP4
Constructors' might not be accepted leaving a difficulty. I think one
ends up with still needing a 'mode' switch if the legacy constructors
are retained?

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Hi Nikita,

I would like to propose reclassifying our few existing E_STRICT notices and
removing this error category:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reclassify_e_strict

As we don't really have good guidelines on when which type of error should
be thrown, I'm mainly going by what category other similar errors use. I'm
open to suggestions, but hope this will not deteriorate into total
bikeshed.

+1 overall.

Regarding "Only variables should be assigned by reference"

Most of errors are appropriate, but some of them may be removed.
For example, literals do not make sense so current behavior is good.

$ php -r 'array_pop([1,2,3]);'
PHP Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in Command line
code on line 1

However, emitting "Only variables should be assigned by reference" for this

$top = array_pop(some_func_returns_array()); // Code needs only top element

seems too strict, for example. I would rather PHP behaves like HHVM

• http://3v4l.org/5AIrb.
• http://3v4l.org/O0SXE

Is it possible relax the error for tmp variables?

Regards,

--
Yasuo Ohgaki
yohgaki@ohgaki.net

Nikita Popov wrote on 22/02/2015 22:30:

Hi internals!

I would like to propose reclassifying our few existing E_STRICT notices and
removing this error category:

 https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reclassify_e_strict

As we don't really have good guidelines on when which type of error should
be thrown, I'm mainly going by what category other similar errors use. I'm
open to suggestions, but hope this will not deteriorate into total bikeshed.

I think my preferred approach would be to first come up with some
defined criteria for different levels of warning, and then look at how
many we need, and how well they map to the current situation.

At the moment we have 3 severity levels: E_STRICT, E_NOTICE, and
E_WARNING. Many people will run with only E_WARNING turned on, because
of the number of messages in the lower levels. There have been a couple
of requests recently to raise messages between these severities, which I
mentioned before leads to a kind of "inflation" unless we also lower the
severity of other messages.

It may be that we only need two different severities, but as you say, we
don't have any guidelines for how to use those two, so dumping a few
extra things in E_NOTICE and a few in E_WARNING doesn't really make
things any clearer to the user.

It's also possible that we need more than two categories of warning,
but not as a strict hierarchy of severities - the aim of the
classification being to allow the user to make decisions about which
warnings they want to see or handle. It's already hard to say whether
E_DEPRECATED has a relative severity, or is actually orthogonal; perhaps
there should be combinations like E_IMPORTANT_DEPRECATED = E_DEPRECATED

• E_WARNING...

Obviously, this is a tougher job than what you have proposed, and since
I keep mentioning it, I should probably stop talking and start doing,
but I'm not convinced of the value of tinkering around the edges without
tackling the underlying problem.

Regards,

Rowan Collins
[IMSoP]

Hi!

I would like to propose reclassifying our few existing E_STRICT notices and
removing this error category:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reclassify_e_strict

Could you add some more explanation about why it is a good thing? I.e.,
E_STRICT has pretty clear place and hurts no one, why remove it? What we
are trying to accomplish by that? I'm just not seeing how it would be
better without E_STRICT.

--
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com

I would like to propose reclassifying our few existing E_STRICT
notices and removing this error category:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reclassify_e_strict

As we don't really have good guidelines on when which type of error
should be thrown, I'm mainly going by what category other similar
errors use. I'm open to suggestions, but hope this will not
deteriorate into total bikeshed.

Those guidelines where part of the original proposal though:
http://grokbase.com/t/php/php-internals/06aq0a1vzx/rfc-e-deprecated
Which interestingly mentions your "Abstract static methods" case.

And I did write something up (with my opinions of it):
http://derickrethans.nl/erecoverableerror.html

In any case, some comments on a few of the cases:

"Redefining" a constructor

• I think that should be retained (or an E_NOTICE) as it's something
  that might catch people out. I think it helps enough to warrant it.

"Same (compatible) property in two used traits"

• I think that should be changed to an E_NOTICE, or not at all, if it's
  already an E_NOTICE. For a similar reason as above.

"Accessing static property non-statically"

• I think this should stay E_STRICT, as it falls in the original
  proposal's category of "any rule that reflects common strict
  standards, like OOP theory that is considered harmless if not
  followed"

cheers,
Derick

Hi Nikita,

Le dim. 22 févr. 2015 à 23:31, Nikita Popov nikita.ppv@gmail.com a écrit :

Hi internals!

I would like to propose reclassifying our few existing E_STRICT notices and
removing this error category:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reclassify_e_strict

As we don't really have good guidelines on when which type of error should
be thrown, I'm mainly going by what category other similar errors use. I'm
open to suggestions, but hope this will not deteriorate into total
bikeshed.

Thanks,
Nikita

I am very glad you bring this subject on the table and I fully agree with
the overall picture, I yet have to see the details as soon as I have some
time.

Just a remark regarding E_STRICT: since its introduction in PHP 5.0, it
provided a way for people migrating from 4.x to 5.x with error_reporting =
E_ALL to focus on the conversion of existing (legacy) application, while
not forcing people to take care of changing things that "worked before but
are now considered not so good" (yaaaaayyy, BC!).
At the same time, people developing new applications could (via opt-in!)
enjoy some more strictness thanks to this flag by adding it to the
error_reporting.

A few versions/years later, PHP 5.4 integrated E_STRICT as part of E_ALL
and it encourages people to give attention to E_STRICT in addition to the
other levels.

However, we are again a bit in the same situation now: how could we provide
extra information to PHP 7.x users (via opt-in) about things that we
consider bad practice/behaviour abuse/side effect, but that will continue
to work? E_DEPRECATED may sound fine, but not always as it imply the
feature will be gone some day.

Could you think about this as this is somewhat related to E_STRICT history?

A possible option (to investigate) would be to combine the various error
levels with a new flag (E_NEW?):

zend_error(E_WARNING  | E_NEW, "This is a new warning as of 7.0!");

For BC:
People having E_WARNING as part of their error_reporting without activating
E_NEW would not see it. Think about this as: it's PHP 5.0 with
error_reporting = E_ALL (without E_STRICT then).

For more errors verbosity (new application development):
One can activate E_ALL reporting (error_reporting = E_ALL | E_NEW or
something else which doesn't expose the E_NEW flag ?) in order to see all
new notices/warnings/...

Later, instead of activating E_NEW by default (like including E_STRICT in
E_ALL), the idea would be to remove the flag where appropriate so that:

zend_error(E_WARNING, "This is a new warning as of 7.0!");

What's your opinion about this? (as a feature, not focusing on the details).

Thanks,
Patrick

Hi internals!

I would like to propose reclassifying our few existing E_STRICT notices and
removing this error category:

https://wiki.php.net/rfc/reclassify_e_strict

As we don't really have good guidelines on when which type of error should
be thrown, I'm mainly going by what category other similar errors use. I'm
open to suggestions, but hope this will not deteriorate into total
bikeshed.

Thanks,
Nikita

hi,

this RFC got accepted, but there are 4 more E_STRICTs in the core which
were kept/missed:
http://lxr.php.net/xref/PHP_TRUNK/ext/date/php_date.c#1544
http://lxr.php.net/xref/PHP_TRUNK/ext/standard/html.c#1241
http://lxr.php.net/xref/PHP_TRUNK/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c#1606
http://lxr.php.net/xref/PHP_TRUNK/ext/mysqli/mysqli_api.c#1644

for the sake of consistency I would like these to be removed/changed into
some other error levels so that we emit no E_STRICT from the core.
I cc'ed Andrey and Derick to this mail as I'm curious about their opinion
on the mysql and date related ones.

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