Re: What is the prevailing sentiment about extract() and compact() ?

On Wed, Nov 29, 2023 at 7:19 AM Stephen Reay <php-lists@koalephant.com> wrote: > So no, I don't think compact() should be deprecated, what I think *should* > happen, is to promote the current warning on undefined variables, to an > error, as per https://wiki.php.net/rfc/undefined_variable_error_promotion.. > > Whether this is a foregone conclusion or not, I don't know because that RFC > doesn't mention compact() specifically. > > I remember fixing a bug in compact where passing parameters which were not array or string were silently accepted - something I discovered when I was tracking down a bug in my code once and it turned out I'd accidentally done compact($x) instead of compact('x') - and that now gives a warning, consistent with the warning when variable names given are undefined. I don't want to see either compact or extract deprecated because I do use both (as do countless open source systems) and I don't think there is a reasonable justification for deprecating them. The behaviour of these functions is understood by static analysis tools, the alternatives are more verbose and more prone to developer error / mistakes from typos. I do agree with upping the error level in compact() from E_WARNING to E_ERROR and upping the warning on bad parameter types to a TypeError (which is what I'd originally pushed for), but I think these things should be a change to compact specifically, separate from any other RFC. -Dave