Re: Re: hex2bin: E_WARNING is too much for odd string?

Hi Sherif, 2013/6/29 Sherif Ramadan <theanomaly.is@gmail.com> > > If we tried to fix all of PHP's functions to either return false always or > return false and raise errors always we'd have to fix every single PHP > function there is since there's absolutely no consistency there as it is. > > We don't have to change them all. Whether function should raise error or just return false determined by use case. For instance, raising error in base64_decode() would be annoying. > Different functions handle failure differently, and not all functions > report every possible error they may encounter. Take functions like > file_get_contents, for example, where it wraps other API functions that > could RETURN_FAILURE and/or trigger the error handler, and > file_get_contents isn't even documented to raise those errors in some cases. > > I see these as two separate problems. The first problem is clearly a > design problem (but we can't really do much about that in the short term). > The second is a documentation problem. Beyond that there are users that > don't clearly understand the behavior of some functions due to the previous > two reasons. > Third problem. There should be error/exception handling guideline for developers. > > >> Considering the use case of hex2bin(), it will not handle external inputs >> in most cases. Therefore, it's better to raise errors invalid inputs. Do >> you prefer not to raise errors? >> > > Considering the fact that we have a discussion in the bug report mentioned > earlier (and it was an extensive discussion because not only were our users > confused but even our core developers were confused if you read the > responses in that bug report), I would prefer that we leave the function > the way it is. > > The error was added for a very specific reason. People thought it was > doing what pack('h*', $hex) does, and clearly it wasn't. So the > documentation was also updated to make note of this and explain it to the > user, along with the helpful error message to indicate that hex2bin('f') > would not work. > I respect the discussion. However, it does not matter to new comers. Raising E_WARING for bad length while simply return false for bad hex does not make sense. > I don't think there was ever any expectation for the user to do something > like hex2bin('Hello World') and expect any kind of sensible result. The > error really does not inform them of anything useful. > There is different view for this. Supplying invalid string to hex2bin() is obvious bug or attack. It would worth to notify users there is obvious problem. I didn't want to take vote for such small change. I hope you've convinced. Regards, -- Yasuo Ohgaki yohgaki@ohgaki.net