Power function as operator

Hi, To challenge myself I had tasked myself to introduce a new operator and opcode to the language; now that I'm done with it, I wanted to measure the response on the list to actually get it merged before writing an RFC. My work can be found here: https://github.com/datibbaw/php-src/compare/pow-operator It introduces the pow() function as an operator ** (double asterisk), as can be found in languages such as Python (with perhaps the notable difference that it's right associative there). The logic gets exposed via the ZEND_POW opcode and all the logic that went into pow() itself is copied into it. The exceptions are that an expression such as [] ** 2 (squared empty array) will cause a fatal error because the operands are incompatible, whereas pow([], 2) would give 0. Why this operator? Basically because: 1) it's shorter (the keyboard rejoices). 2) it's faster (no ZEND_CALL). 3) it's found in other languages too. I've only implemented one of the test suites; there are quite a few for just one function, but when needed I can add those others as well. Btw, changes to vld aren't pushed yet. Let me know! -- -- Tjerk