Re: Make Reflection*::getDocComment() return an empty string instead of false

Am 25.06.2025 um 12:37 schrieb Gina P. Banyard <internals@gpb.moe>: > While working on the deprecation to/from bool type juggling in functions RFC and seeing the > impact within Symfony, we found a common slightly annoying case. > The getDocComment method of various Reflection classes was always used as a string, and we > thought changing the behaviour in PHP made more sense. > > I submitted a PR [1] but was asked to gather feedback on the mailing list. > > Please let me know what you think. In general I like out-of-band instead of in-band signalling as it seems more robust to me. I am a bit confused why it was false in the first place and not null as the absence of something was in my book the definition of null. But then again I realise there is a general aversion against null. I noticed that the "empty string for absence of value" was also used in DOMElement::getAttribute() but you can argue that the existence of DOMElement::hasAttribute() fills this gap. Anyway, I'm not a big fan of this move but won't fight it either. Regards, - Chris