Re: [RFC] Short-function syntax

On Tue, Oct 20, 2020, at 11:08 PM, Mike Schinkel wrote: > > On Oct 20, 2020, at 2:19 PM, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com> wrote: > > > > A while back, Nikita mentioned that it should now be easy to offer an abbreviated syntax > > for functions that are just a single expression. I decided to take a crack at it and it turns out > > he was right. I thus offer this RFC: > > > > https://wiki.php.net/rfc/short-functions > > > > Hopefully I made a decent enough case for it. It's entirely a convenience factor, > > but I think for many OOP cases (getter methods and factored out operations) and functional cases > > (where functions should generally be a single expression conceptually) it does make the code nicer, > > more compact, and more readable. > > Simple and elegant. I like it. > > I have two comments, but not about the feature. > > One comment is about the RFC itself, and the other is about a use-case > used to justify the feature that could warrant its own bespoke feature. > > > 1. The section on "Conditional methods" is really just an argument > about the benefits of encapsulating complex logic into well-named > functions as you could achieve exactly the same benefit with the > existing function syntax. It does not appear to me that it provides > any specific justification for the feature in the RFC. Should it really > be part of the RFC? In pre-RFC discussion, one of the pushbacks I got was "pfft, how common are single-line methods anyway?" That example is mainly to demonstrate "quite common, actually, in fact common refactoring patterns tend to produce them a lot." It's not the refactoring itself that benefits, per se, as it is the refactoring technique produces functions that would benefit from it. > 2. In the section "Decorating functions in live code" where you state > "Often times, methods exist that are just delegating to some other > method, either in the same object or a composed object." I think we > could see great benefit from explicitly building delegation into > classes much like how Go provides type embedding[1]. For PHP, extending > the syntax for traits could be used to support delegation of one class > to another embedded class. Can you see this as a potential feature? > > -Mike I'd be in favor of some kind of automated "delegate this interface's methods to this object property" syntax, although that is unrelated to the RFC at hand. --Larry Garfield