Re: [RFC] Bare Name Array

On 1 Jun 2014, at 19:13, Stas Malyshev <smalyshev@sugarcrm.com> wrote: > You can already do stringKey => 3 :) Yes, but then you’ll get: Notice: Use of undefined constant stringKey - assumed 'stringKey' in Command line code on line 1 > And saving characters is not really > a big priority. Well, we already replaced array() with []. I think it is reasonable to consider saving characters in other places. It’s not a *big* priority, no, and we shouldn’t do it excessively, but if common cases are cumbersome, we should try to deal with them. Array literals with string keys and dereferencing arrays with string keys are extremely common in PHP. So I think this reduction would benefit most users, especially those who deal with JSON and the like (which I do a lot in my on code), as this makes declaring arrays to be serialised more convenient. Also, foobar: just looks nicer than “foobar” =>, especially when you have syntax highlighting. > Changing language syntax and making millions of people > to learn new syntax just to save a couple of chars does not look like a > big win to me. We did it for array(), I think we should do it again. Also, yes, millions might have to learn the new syntax, but I think it is simple and intuitive. It is not difficult to learn, and hey, perhaps millions can benefit, especially since both target very common cases (I expect they’re the most common, except for numerical indexes) when dealing with arrays. -- Andrea Faulds http://ajf.me/