Re: [Discuss] Add PDO disconnect() and isConnected()

On Tue, Sep 30, 2025 at 4:56 PM Kamil Tekiela <tekiela246@gmail.com> wrote: > I find this proposal to be a backwards step in the age when we are > moving away from resources and their explicit closure. We have > disabled this in PHP 8.0 for curl_close(), imagedestroy(), > openssl_pkey_free(), shmop_close() and xml_parser_free(). Sure, > mysqli_close() still works, but the whole extension is mostly a > historical artefact and a bunch of bad design choices due to what that > extension is (quick replacement of mysql_* API). PDO was designed much > better and it deliberately avoided the foot gun that is explicit > connection closure. I really wish we would not introduce bad design > choices into the language, and because of this, I wish this proposal > were unsuccessful. > All of the foot gun examples you listed are such because that historic design pattern *required* explicit resource frees, and they are foot guns because it is easy to forget doing that. Also, mysqli_close() is the only one that handles a stateful network connection and not a local resource, which is a good reason why it still works. There are legitimate use cases where you may want to explicitly and immediately close a network connection, even if PHP would do it eventually. Cheers, Andrey.