Re: Return Type Hinting for Methods RFC

On 12/22/2011 07:08 AM, Keloran wrote: > i would love to see this expanded aswell (the way type hinting on function > variables was supposed to be), so that it could be > > string, int > > e.g. > function int test(bool $tester) { > if ($tester) { return 5; } > return 99; > } Return type hinting needs to be aligned with parameter type hinting, and as has been pointed out many times on this list, type hinting for interchangable scalar types is a really bad idea. It will push all type checking up to the caller of the underlying functions/methods. PHP is primarily a Web scripting language and the Web isn't typed. Having stuff like this break: if(age_check($_POST['age'])) { do_stuff(); } because the author of the age_check() function added an int type hint just doesn't make any sense. It would cause everyone to have to start casting things everywhere, just in case. eg. if(age_check((int)$_POST['age'])) { do_stuff(); } This is not a step forward. If the author of age_check() really doesn't want to accept type-juggled arguments, then it is easy enough to do a strict type check in the function itself. This puts the effort in the correct place and doesn't encourage this type of coding. -Rasmus