Re: 5.4 regression: non-existent sub-sub keys now have values

On Friday, November 25, 2011 08:23 AM, devis@lucato.it wrote:

On 24 November 2011 21:48, Rasmus Lerdorf<rasmus@lerdorf.com> wrote:

On 11/24/2011 01:44 PM, Yasuo Ohgaki wrote:

Hi all, I should think twice before seding mail. "abc" as array index is converted to 0 since it's not a integer. So with current code is behave consistently with regards to string to long conversion. However, PHP 5.3 php -r '$s = "abc"; var_dump($s[0]["bar"]);' PHP Fatal error: Cannot use string offset as an array in Command line code on line 1 PHP 5.4 ./php -r '$s = "abc"; var_dump($s[0]["bar"]);' string(1) "a" Isn't it better to raise notice for accessing string by string index? There is no use to allowing string index access to strings. I think raising notice is feasible. Isn't it?

String index access is still required since they are often numeric strings. We could add a notice for non-numeric strings, but the check would slow things down a bit. -Rasmus

Would it be possible to have that check only if E_NOTICE is enabled ? That would allow to limit the cost to development environments (assuming one could disable E_NOTICEs on production env). Devis This is a design issue of using the same syntax for arrays and strings, and accepting string indexes for both, I think this is beginning to illustrate some of the flaws in that design.

if (isset($_POST['query']['search'])) { << This does not do what you think (if ?query=a_string.. Although the chained string offset fix is probably the right thing to do, I think it should be reverted in this version, then this process occur: 5.4 - revert chained string offsets - add E_NOTICE to any usage of string index's of string eg . $a = "string" ; $a["string"] = gives E_NOTICE - users can add (int) if they really need to check string indexes of a string - isset($string['x']) will return true as present - isset($string['x']['x']) will return false as present 5.5 - reapply chained string offsets - add E_FATAL to any usage of string index's of string = eg . $a = "string" ; $a["string"] = gives E_FATAL ???? - make $a["string"] return an empty string - so isset() on chained string offsets will work as expected. - isset($string['x']) will return false as per the warning on the previous version.. - isset($string['x']['x']) will return false as present Thoughts......... Regards Alan