Re: [RFC] Nullable and non-nullable cast operators

On 31 October 2025 09:05:35 GMT, Alexandre Daubois <alex.daubois+php@gmail.com> wrote: >We did some research with Nicolas about deprecating casting null >instead of proposing a new (!type) operator. The idea did not >make >it, and we explained why in this new section: >https://wiki.php.net/rfc/nullable-not-nullable-cast-operator#alternative_considereddeprecating_null_casting This highlights something that's been bugging me about this RFC: you've called the "(!type)" syntax a "non-nullable cast", but that's actually the *least significant difference* from existing casts. The *most significant difference* is that it can throw a TypeError for an invalid value. In fact I would argue that existing casts don't "accept null" at all - the behaviour of (int)$foo can be adequately described something like this: 1. if $foo is already an int, return that 2. if $foo is a float, truncate it to an integer 3. if $foo is a numeric string, return the integer equivalent 4. if $foo begins with a numeric string, return the integer equivalent of that part 5. else, return integer zero I may have missed some other cases, but there's no explicit rule for null, it's just falling into the "else" clause at the end. You would get the same answer from a hypothetical "cast($foo as int default 0)", except that maybe we'd like to remove rule #4. What you are proposing is a new syntax that changes step 5 to "else, throw a TypeError". That might be a useful feature in some cases, but it's nothing to do with the title of the RFC. Rowan Tommins [IMSoP]