Re: [RFC] [Discussion] Add clamp function

On Wednesday 27 August 2025 18:40:51 (+02:00), Larry Garfield wrote: > ...So it looks like CSS is the oddball here. We should follow the clear > majority approach... While the majority of languages favor clamp($value, $min, $max), dismissing the CSS order without examining the "why" misses a valuable perspective, especially for a language so intertwined with web development. The rationale for aligning with the majority (and the current RFC) boils down to the **Principle of Least Surprise within PHP's own ecosystem**. PHP is an imperative language. Its standard library functions, particularly in math, consistently take the value to be operated on as the first argument: min($value1, $value2), max($value1, $value2), round($value, $precision). Introducing clamp($min, $value, $max) would break this pattern, making it the odd one out *within PHP itself*. This internal inconsistency would be a greater source of errors for PHP developers than not matching an external standard like CSS. The solution to the CSS dissonance is not to change the function but to **document it explicitly**: > **Note for Web Developers:** This function uses the argument order > clamp(value, min, max), which differs from the CSS function > clamp(min, value, max). This addresses the concern head-on. The ultimate win is not the argument order itself, but the mere existence of the function, which finally banishes the awkward and error-prone max($min, min($max, $value)) incantation. My 2cents, --hakre