Re: [RFC] Pattern Matching

> On 2 Dec 2025, at 04:45, Larry Garfield <larry@garfieldtech.com> wrote: > > Hi folks. Ilija and I would like to present our latest RFC endeavor, pattern matching: > > https://wiki.php.net/rfc/pattern-matching > > You may note the date on the RFC is from 2020. Yes, we really have had this one in-progress > for 5 years. :-) (Though it was inactive for many of those years, in fairness.) Pattern matching > was intended as the next follow up to Enums, as it's a stepping stone toward full ADT support. > However, we also feel it has enormous benefit on its own for simplifying complex comparisons. > > This RFC has been through numerous iterations, including a full implementation rewrite just > recently that made a number of features much easier. We have therefore included two patterns that > were previously slated for later inclusion but turned out to be trivially easy in the new approach. > (Variable pinning and numeric comparison.) > > Nonetheless, there are two outstanding questions on which we are looking for feedback. > > Naturally given the timing, we will not be calling a vote until at least late January, > regardless of how the discussion goes. So, plenty of time to express your support. :-) > > -- > Larry Garfield > larry@garfieldtech.com > Hi Larry, Is there a specific reason why less than/etc comparison (and the future scope of ranges) is limited to numerics? 'A' < 'K' comparisons are already in the language, and range() accepts string arguments to produce an array of bytes. Cheers Stephen