Re: [RFC] Deprecations for PHP 8.5

On Wed, August 6, 2025 at 03:09 Christoph M. Becker wrote: > On 06.08.2025 at 06:21, Theodore Brown wrote: > >> I just analyzed the top 1500 Composer packages for a couple more of the proposed syntax >> deprecations, and found the following: >> >> ## Deprecate non-standard cast names: >> 197 non-standard casts in 25 unique packages. >> >> ## Deprecate backticks as an alias for shell_exec: >> 49 backtick operator executions in 10 unique packages. >> >> I find it ironic that the more widely used of these proposals has the least opposition to >> deprecate (100% in favor so far), while deprecating semicolon-terminated case statements >> (which has zero usages in the top 1500 packages) currently has more opposition than either >> of these. > > I would not necessarily expect backtick operators to be used in top > Composer packages.  That is likely a feature used by some private shell > scripts; maybe sometimes quick and dirty through-away/ use-once scripts. Hi Christoph, Here's the list of usages: https://gist.github.com/theodorejb/965633b9787475dfe64cc53dc941bc49 Some appear to be in tests or internal scripts, but not all. E.g. the laravel\pulse usages, and the ones for console utilities. Theodore