Re: Syntactic improvement to array

Andi Gutmans wrote: > Hi, > > I thought I may have brought this up a long time ago but couldn't find anything in the > archives. > For a long time already I've been thinking about possibly adding a new syntax for > array(...) which would be shorter. I'd suggest > [...]. While I am usually not in favor of having more than one way to do things, I think > it'd look much more elegant especially (but > not only) for nested arrays. > > So what I'm thinking of is: > array(1, 2, 3) == [1, 2, 3] > array(1, 2, array("foo", "bar")) == [1, 2, ["foo", > "bar"]] > array("key" => 1, "key2" => 2) == ["key" => 1, > "key2" => 2] > > $arr = [1, 2, 3] > vs. > $arr = array(1, 2, 3) > > Well enough examples given :) > I think it's not worth doing unless there's overwhelming support as it's not > desperately needed. But I'd be interested to hear > people's thoughts. It seems implementation shouldn't be an issue but I'd have to > dive a bit deeper. future: <?php $a = [1, 2, 3]; $a[1] = [1]; $a = [1]; [$a] = $a; $a[] = []; echo $a.[1]; // not a parse error ?> now: <?php $a = array(1, 2, 3); $a[1] = array(1); $a = array(1); list($a) = $a; $a[] = array(); echo $a.[1]; // now a parse error ?> For what it's worth, the examples above show why I'm a strong -1 on this idea. It introduces the possibility of weird misunderstandings that just don't exist now, and also introduces a new way to accidentally break your script that wasn't possible before. The only way I could see solving this would be: 1) [] != list() 2) use a[] as in $a = a[1, 2, 3] but then we might as well stick with array(). Either way, [] is overloaded in the new definition: 1) array access 2) ArrayAccess object offsetGet/offsetSet 3) incremental index ($a[] = 1;) 4) array creation [5) list()] Whereas now, it is only 3 possible meanings, all of which are consistent with a few quirks in the ArrayAccess one as of PHP 5.2. Greg