Re: Scalar type hinting

From: Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:07:04 +0000
Subject: Re: Scalar type hinting
References: 1 2 3 4 5 6  Groups: php.internals 
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> > > Now strings. There are two different kinds of strings. > The first one $age = $_POST['age'] is the kind of string that you want to > treat as a number. And that's fine. > > But you also have $name = $_POST['name'] // 'John Doe' which is wrong > to treat as a the same as $age. > > php doesn't have the necessary information to tell whether your input variable is a number, or only looks like a number. how would you define what is an int? what type would the following input variables have? - "1" - "1.1" - "1.0" - ".5" - "0777" I think it is better to populate everything as string, and let the application developer to parse the inputs as he knows what should they represent. Btw. there was a discussion about raising a warning (somebody even suggested creating an E_TYPE level) when data loss occurs on a type juggling. I would support that, as people tend to be surprised when they realize the first time that 123 == '123 apples' evaluates to true in php. -- Ferenc Kovács @Tyr43l - http://tyrael.hu

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