RE: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Deprecate PHP's short open tags

> I would like to start the discussion about the deprecation of PHP's short open > tags: > https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecate_php_short_tags Hi, I did read the initial thread about this and now the RFC and it doesn't really state what is the reason of removing the short tags besides this one line: "PHP has provided over the years different ways to indicate the beginning of PHP code other than the standard <?php ... ?>" Is there a (noticeable) speed improvement or does it make the parser/engine more simple? Is it wrong to provide different ways to indicate the start of php code? Since the short '<?' came first one could argue which is the 'standard'. Also considering there is somewhat low adoption of new php versions [1] a change which brakes a lot of legacy code might even further push back the switch to modern/current versions (at least now even if the defaults disable the short tags, there is an option to reenable the functionality). Obviously you could say that those using old versions won't be affected anyways and those using php 7.x and waiting for 8.x will use recent application code and also won't notice this deprecation, but in my opinion (and praxes) it isn't always the case. [1] https://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all rr