Re: [RFC] Return Type Declarations

On 4/28/14, 8:30 PM, Levi Morrison wrote:

I will attempt to contact the HHVM team (perhaps SaraG) to see if there was a technical reason for it.

I would agree, and look forward to seeing their reasoning.

HHVM puts the return type before the use case because: - A user is already familiar with function(): Foo - A use statement is not really part of the function signature (during inheritance and such) Additionally, it is common to write closures using their shorthand notation: ==> (see http://docs.hhvm.com/manual/en/hack.lambda.php) I would counter: - Use statements are special parameters (similar to constructor arguments) and that putting it after the use statement makes more sense - Putting it after use statements is less ugly. - Putting it before the use statement is a bit confusing; consider this Hack declaration:

         $i = 0;
         $inc = function(): Iterator<int> use(&$i) {//...
     It looks like the Iterator<int> is somehow using $i.

What does this list think?

Honestly I don't much care for the compact lambda syntax in Hack as I like that PHP is explicit on variable capture. (Javascript isn't, and it's a common source of errors; see the "never do this" comment on the link above.) <bikeshed> I subjectively like the return at the very end, too. The return is the "last" thing that matters, so it comes at the end. Too, it clusters all of the inputs together (parameters and closures) followed by the output (return). </bikeshed> --Larry Garfield