Non-capturing catches View as Markdown

Introduction

Currently, PHP requires to capture the exception being caught to a variable:

try {
    foo();
} catch (SomeException $ex) {
    die($ex->getMessage());
}

However, you need to specify the variable even if it's not used:

try {
    changeImportantData();
} catch (PermissionException $ex) {
    echo "You don't have permission to do this";
}

Someone reading the above code is left to wonder if the author intended to not use the exception variable or it's a bug.

Proposal

Allow catching exceptions without capturing them to variables:

try {
    changeImportantData();
} catch (PermissionException) { // The intention is clear: exception details are irrelevant
    echo "You don't have permission to do this";
}

Prior art

Such change was first proposed in this RFC 7 years ago. It was turned down mostly because it also wanted to allow blanket catches like this:

try {
    foo();
} catch {
    bar();
}

Meanwhile what I'm proposing here has received mostly positive feedback so I feel it's worth revisiting.

Backward Incompatible Changes

None.

Proposed PHP Version(s)

8.0

RFC Impact

None.

Vote

Voting started on 2020-05-10 and will end on 2020-05-24 at 9:00 UTC.

Vote: Accept this RFC? — Yes: 48 · No: 1 (closed)

Patches and Tests

* https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/5345

Implementation

After the project is implemented, this section should contain

1. the version(s) it was merged into
2. a link to the git commit(s)
3. a link to the PHP manual entry for the feature
4. a link to the language specification section (if any)

References

* https://externals.io/message/109550 - initial announcements

Rejected Features

Keep this updated with features that were discussed on the mail lists.