Re: Long-Term Planning for PHP 9.0 Error Promotion

On 26/01/2022 14:48, Christian Schneider wrote:

2) Hot take: I still consider the well-defined constructs like $count++ or $counts[$word]++ to be useful

I agree, particularly with regards array items rather than top-level variables. Last time this came up, I suggested that before promoting the error further, we find elegant solutions for the valid use cases. For instance, the following code is safe, useful, and readable: $countsByDayByCategory = []; foreach ( $someData as $item ) {

    $countsByDayByCategory[ $item['day'] ][ $item['category'] ]++;

} While there are definitely cases where spotting unset array keys would be useful, the current "fix" for this code leads to repetitive and hard to read code, which is probably *easier* to miss a mistake in: $countsByDayByCategory = []; foreach ( $someData as $item ) {

    $countsByDayByCategory[ $item['day'] ] ??= [];
    $countsByDayByCategory[ $item['day'] ][ $item['category'] ] ??= 0;
    $countsByDayByCategory[ $item['day'] ][ $item['category'] ]++;

} Python has a "defaultdict" which lets you define the default for each dimension up front, rather than needing conditionals inside the loop, something like this: $countsByDayByCategory = new DefaultDict(new DefaultDict(0)); foreach ( $someData as $item ) {

    $countsByDayByCategory[ $item['day'] ][ $item['category'] ]++;

} I would be very interested in having something similar in PHP, and other suggestions to similar use cases, rather than just marching onwards with errors. Regards, -- Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]