Re: [RFC] [VOTE] Deprecate PHP's short open tags, again

On 07/08/2019 18:44, Peter Kokot wrote:

I think the worst situation for language is that there is an option to write non portable code with this unfortunate short tag. It won't work everywhere. So, this is already a reason for thinking forward (at least from the progress and consistency point of view)

I feel it necessary to point out that non-portability due to INI settings applies to almost everything PHP does, and in and of itself should not be considered a major argument. PHP is, after all, built almost entirely on extensions. Those extensions can either be there, or not, enabled in the INI, or not. Do we consider code written containing functions from mysqli, gd or zip (just to name a few) to be non-portable because we can omit them from the INI (or just not install them). There are arguments for and against removal. IMO non-portability is not one of them. IMHO short tag removal has one major thing going for it, consistency, and by extension, predictability. That's it. Is that enough? I'm on the fence. Mark Randall