Re: [RFC] Add is_list(mixed $value): bool to check for list-like arrays

> On Dec 19, 2020, at 19:43, tyson andre <tysonandre775@hotmail.com> > wrote: > > It can be useful to verify that the assumption that array keys are > consecutive integers is correct, both for data that is being passed > into a module or for validating data before returning it from a > module. However, because it's currently inconvenient to do that, this > has rarely been done in my experience. I think there are some places where is_list() could be unintuitive to those who don’t understand some of the idiosyncrasies of PHP. For example, with $a = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz’]; is_list() will return true, but if you run $a through asort(), is_list() will return false because the keys are no longer consecutive integers, but is there any doubt this is still a list? Maybe in a pure sense, it’s not, but I think this could be confusing. But now, if we do $b = array_merge($a, ['qux', 'quux']); $b is now back to being a list, so is_list($b) returns true. While I understand the convenience is_list() provides--I myself have implemented the opposite of this numerous times (e.g., is_dict())--it comes close to implying a data type that PHP doesn’t have, and I think this could give a false sense of type-safety-ness when using this function to check whether something is a 0-indexed array. Cheers, Ben

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