Re: U

On Sat, 2008-01-05 at 15:59 -0800, Mike Lively wrote: > > Because type hinting is supposed to limit what kind of variable type > > is > > allowed for a parameter. When you magically convert you kill the whole > > idea of type hints and replace it with some magical function parameter > > auto type conversion, which would be another hard to understand magic > > feature of PHP. > > This is one of the reasons I am not so sure I like the idea of type > hinting for scalar types. > > In a language like php where you often times have data coming in as a > string no matter what, it seems like strict type hinting would be a pain > in the neck to use effectively. If you start using 'int' type checks for > functions you are going to want to be passing data from _GET, _POST, etc > to, you will have to do is_numeric checks or something similar, so > instead of saving this userland code (like people are arguing scalar > type hints will do) you are just moving that userland outside of the > function into the code calling the function. That doesn't seem like much > of a win to me in the ease-of-use regard. Please, everyone understand this: Type hinting is not intended to be used for input. Only internal stuff. Forget $_REUQEST, $_POST, etc. Type hinting would not be useful for these things, we all know this. > That being said I still do agree with Stefan that changing the type of a > variable would be aweful. I do know that for any purpose I have for > additional type hinting would actually be solved by just introducing > type hints for 'scalar' (read string or int) and 'resource'. > > - Mike Lively >