Re: Typed array properties V2

Hello all It's a much-requested feature for years and years. My first thought was "we need generics, not this" but than I took 5 minutes to actually think about it. While the same, and much more, can be achieved with generics, it's a difficult feature to implement. There have been several RFCs for generics in the past, which failed. I know Levi Morisson was, at one point, looking at adding support for generics only in traits, because it's difficult to add them in other places. While I still think generics would be a great feature, I now also believe it's worth looking at an "array of" type as something standalone. I've got no clue about the technical implications, but maybe suprting "array of" syntax is a lot more easy than full blown generics? Looking at my day to day work with PHP, I'dsay "array of" types would solve ~80% of my problems with PHP's current type system, and I figure there are lots of developers in a similar situation. If I remember correct from my college days, Java also supports both styles: Int[] and ArrayList<Int>. All that to say that maybe it's worth the effort looking at "array of" types as something different than generics? Kind regards Brent > On 17 Jan 2020, at 08:50, Aran Reeks <cdtreeks@gmail.com> wrote: > > Hi Internals, > > I'd like to kick off a conversation to capture everyone else's thoughts on > tweaking / improving typed properties for arrays (for a PHP 8.x release). > > With all the work done lately to greatly improve the type support in PHP > (which is amazing by the way), I'm finding for the most part, I'm no longer > needing to Docblock as much of my code which is lovely. > > That said, there's a common use case that keeps me going back to them which > I think would be a good thing for PHP to try and solve as a language > feature - better typing of arrays to type their properties. > > IDEs like PHPStorm handle this structure already hence sticking to that as > a starting point... > > @returns []int > > This would designate the return of an array where all its keys are that of > the int type, but it works for any type. > > With that in mind, it might also make sense to allow a shorthand array > alias for array types anyway - array -> []. > > To use actual PHP examples, this would mean the following would be > supported: > > // Typed array properties ...values would follow any existing PHO type > function returnsIntArray(): []int; > function returnsClassArray(): []Class; > > // The same outcome > function returnsArray(): array; > function returnsArray(): []; > > I welcome all your thoughts on this proposal. > > Many thanks, > Aran