Re: [RFC] Alternative typehinting syntax for accessors

On 1/8/13 2:56 AM, Christian Stoller wrote:

But the way 'nullable' properties are defined is not very intuitive and unclean, in my opinion. Stas has already mentioned that. public DateTime $date = NULL; // this looks like the property is initialized with null, but it does not show that the property is 'nullable'

Much agreed. After instantiation, these shouldn't behave differently:

public     $foo = null;

public Foo $foo = null; Sure, method signatures have special behavior based on a default value, but IMO: 1. those semantics aren't entirely intuitive to begin with 2. property initializers aren't method sigs 3. the semantics would apply only to some properties

     public DateTime? $date;

In C# the question mark after a type is a short hand for a generic Nullable type.

I like that it's an established practice of doing exactly what we're trying to do. Could we not just make it obvious?: public Foo|null $foo; Steve Clay -- http://www.mrclay.org/