Re: Adding a more logical string slicing function to PHP

If substr() really was so bad, then surely we'd see userland implementations of str_slice() in every project? Jevon On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 7:06 PM, Dan Birken <birken@gmail.com> wrote: > My apologizes if I am bringing up a topic that has been discussed before, > this is my first time wading into the PHP developers lists and I couldn't > find anything particularly relevant with the search. > > Here is a bug I submitted over the weekend ( > http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=54387) with an attached patch > that adds a > str_slice() function into PHP.  This function is just a very simple string > slicing function, with the logical interface of str_slice(string, start, > [end]).  It is of course meant to replace substr() as an interface for > string slicing. > > I detailed the reasons I submitted the patch in the bug a little bit, but > the main reason is that I think the substr() function is really overly > confusing and just not an intuitive method of string slicing, which is > exceedingly common functionality.  I realize we don't want to go around > adding lots of random little functions into the language that don't offer > much, but the problem with that is that if we have a function like substr() > with an unusual and unintuitive interface, it becomes unchangeable due to > legacy issues and then you can never improve.  I think this particular > functionality is important enough to offer an updated interface.  In the bug > I also pointed to two related bugs that would be essentially fixed with this > patch. > > -Dan >