Re: [DISCUSS] Should RFCs for new functions include a userland polyfill/reference implementation?

Hi On 2026-08-25 17:34, Larry Garfield wrote:

And it would also give us a target to benchmark against to see if putting it in C really has a performance benefit.

I believe performance should not be a factor in deciding what should be part of the stdlib and what should not: Performance is a moving target and what might be true today might no longer be true tomorrow - with folks generally having wildly incorrect assumptions about what actually is “slow”. Once we add something to the stdlib we need to maintain it for the next 15+ years. (Broad) usefulness and good API design must be the deciding factors for whether something should be in the stdlib or not [1]. With PIE it has become easier than ever to build a custom extension for one’s personal use cases to improve performance there. Best regards Tim Düsterhus [1] It is debatable if the non-required bundled extensions are part of the stdlib or not, for some of the more obscure ones like ext/tidy there likely is a little more leeway in “just do it”.