Re: Revive Number Format Separator RFC

On Thu, Apr 25, 2019 at 6:07 PM Theodore Brown <theodorejb@outlook.com> wrote: > Is there any chance the Number Format Separator RFC [1] could be revived > for PHP 7.4? I looked at the discussion from a few years ago and it's not > clear why many people originally voted against it. > > JavaScript and Python have both gotten this feature recently and it's > something I really miss in PHP when declaring/reading large numbers. > > Maybe it would help to simplify how the restrictions are described in the > RFC. As I understand it, the only restriction is that each underscore in a > numeric literal must be between two digits. Perhaps the way the RFC > described this syntax made it seem more complex than it is. > > Best regards, > > Theodore Brown > > [1]: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/number_format_separator Subsequent conversation occurred on the voting thread [1], which wasn't included by reference in the RFP itself. The only dissent I saw in that thread came from Pascal Martin, speaking for AFUP, who wrote [2]: > it would be harder to search in code, as there would be more than > one way to write a number. Basically, it would break grep/find. > Splitting numbers so they are more readable is kind of a presentation > matter and, as such, could be done by an editor/IDE when displaying > code, without having to modify the code by hand Related: the RFC author Tom Punt also detailed the implementation, but didn't incorporate that by reference into the RFC [3]. Worth the read. With Tom's blessing, I'd support re-visiting this feature. It's useful, IMO. [1]: https://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=145271098232484&w=2 [2]: https://marc.info/?l=php-internals&m=145320709922246&w=2 [3]: https://phpinternals.net/articles/implementing_a_digit_separator