Re: Strict switch statements

On Thu, Jun 14, 2018 at 6:53 AM, Sara Golemon <pollita@php.net> wrote: > Just for casual discussion at this point: > https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/3297 > > switch ($a) { > case FOO: > // Works exactly as current behavior. > break; > case == FOO: > // Nearly identical, though not using the ZEND_CASE optimization. > // Can probably make this equivalent to case FOO, but it > felt > like an interesting direction. > break; > case === FOO: > // Only triggers if $a === FOO, no type juggling > break; > } > > Love it? Hate it? See obvious flaws? The implementation is just a > rushed proof of concept, not something I've labored over, it may well > have bugs. Certainly wouldn't target anything earlier than 7.4, if at > all. > I like the general idea here (switch with strict type comparison), but not super fond of the particular syntax and implementation. I think if people want to use strict matching, they'll quite likely want to have it on all cases. Something like "strict switch ($expr) {}" or "switch strict ($expr) {}" or "switch (strict $expr) {}" or "switch ($expr) strict {}" or "switch ($expr) { strict; }" or whatever would be preferable in that case. Additionally, switch has the issue of fall-through behavior, which is somewhat unexpected and error prone to many people. It might make sense to introduce an entirely new "match" statement that conforms a bit more with how switch-like strictures are implemented nowadays. That is, something like match ($expr) { "foo" => {...}, "bar" | "baz" => {...}, } or similar. This might need some more design work to ensure forward compatibility with potential future algebraic datatypes etc. Nikita