RE: [PHP-DEV] regex operators

On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, David Sklar wrote: > On Tuesday, October 14, 2003 11:18 AM, mailto:derick@php.net > wrote: > > > Right, and as George's example already works I see no point in adding > > more 'magic' operators that look like Perl to me. > > What about a match operator? I realize that similar functionality can be > achieved with preg_match(), but we could duplicate all operators with > functions: if (equals($foo,$bar)) {} instead of if ($foo == bar). Obviously, > testing equality is a frequent enough operation that it would be clumsy to > not have an == operator. In the same vein, matching against a regex seems > like a more frequent operation in web programming than, say bitshifting with > assignment ala the <<= and >>= operators. Which is why I think it could be a > useful addition. You are pushing towards $_~=/^\.*?\$$/; This is not human-readable code and one of the basic characteristics that sets PHP apart from Perl. Every non-trivial line of PHP code has a decypherable keyword that you can plug into the manual to figure out what that line is doing. We make sure of this by keeping the number of operators to a minimum. As for your bitshifting example. It has nothing to do with the frequency of use, it has to do with readability. -Rasmus