Re: Allowing NULL for some internal functions

Den 2022-01-02 kl. 00:17, skrev Craig Francis:

On Thu, 2 Dec 2021 at 15:19, Sara Golemon <pollita@php.net> wrote:

On Thu, Dec 2, 2021 at 8:48 AM Craig Francis <craig@craigfrancis.co.uk> wrote:

Is there any value in me proposing an RFC to update *some* internal functions so they can accept NULL?

I'm not hard against this idea. The interpretation of null in these contexts as being equivalent to empty string isn't unreasonable. I guess the only objection I could have would be an academic one and I can't really defend that. So yeah, sure... why not?

Thanks Sara, I've spent a few days coming up with a short(ish) list of parameters that are likely to receive NULL. The focus is on making it easier for developers to upgrade to newer versions of PHP. I'm thinking of the typical developer, probably using WordPress, isn't using Psalm (at levels 1 to 3, with no baseline), and isn't using strict_types; where they don't really have the time to add strval() to everything that could be NULL. Draft RFC: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/allow_null And the list, where I'm proposing we only relax this requirement for the *bold* parameters: https://github.com/craigfrancis/php-allow-null-rfc/blob/main/functions-change.md I'll give it a few weeks to see if there are any parameter suggestions (welcome via email, pull request, carrier pigeon, etc), then I'll start looking for the best way to implement this. Craig PS; starting new thread, as I have gone a bit off topic, original one at: https://externals.io/message/116519#116556 Hi,

Thanks for this RFC! I think it could interesting to see how libraries that needs to adapt to this are doing it IRL. One example I have seen how to fix this for e.g. substr is to replace: $result = substr($string, 0, $length) with: $result = substr($string ?? '', 0, $lenght) So the null coalescing operator comes in quite handy ;-) Now if this is a good way to solve it is another matter. But if you are a maintainer of a library that works fine and wants to support PHP 8.1 this will solve the upgrade in a smooth way. Would be interesting to see how common this approach is for solving PHP 8.1 upgrades for non-nullable arguments with internal functions? I mean, it shows the value with the RFC from a slightly another angle. Regards //Björn