Re: Proposal: Array syntax

More magic. The difference between these two lines: $a = array(1,2,3); $a = [ 1,2,3 ]; is that with the first you can go and look up the array keyword and see what it does, whereas on the second line you have no idea. You can't look up a [ You are right that arrays are common and that this might be a case to break the no-magic PHP rule, but I am personally not in favour of breaking it for this case. -Rasmus On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Christian Schneider wrote: > I propose to add an alternative (backward compatible) short array > creation syntax: > $a = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; and $a = [ 'a' => 42, 'b' => "foo" ]; > > It can also be used in function calls: > img(['src' => "logo.gif", 'alt' => "Logo"]); > > Reason behind this change: Arrays are used a lot and should therefore > have as little syntactic overhead as possible. And I think the short > syntax is also easier to read and write. > > A patch for the parser is trivial and is attached for Zend2. > > Note: I checked the newsgroup archive but couldn't find a discussion > about this. After not hearing back about my proposed enhancement to > debug_backtrace() and the dangling comma for function call parameters > being rejected I wonder if I'm using the right mailing list for this :-) > > - Chris >