Uniform Variable Syntax

On 8 Jul 2014, at 15:48, Derick Rethans <derick@php.net> wrote: > I've just voted "no" for this, because it introduces a tiny BC break. > Now, I realize this is a tiny BC break, but it is just *those* that > drive people nuts when upgrading. There is so much non-public code - a > cursor check of Symfony and ZF is not representative. From Andrea Faulds: > It is a tiny BC break and it’s for PHP NEXT (i.e 6 or 7), not 5.6. Why not? It’s a > tiny change which will bother some people but make everyone > else’s life easier. Thank you, Derick, for voting against a BC break. I do appreciate the intention of making things more consistent. Given that this is a parser change, I wonder if there is hope of mitigating the BC issues by providing an option to generate "new" code from "old" code. Today, I can run "php -l" and php will tell me about syntax problems. If php6 had a "php --convert-from 5.4.30" that would read in a file that worked in 5.4.30 and output a file that does the same thing using php6 syntax, I think that would be a Good Thing. Perhaps it would be better as a tool on the side than as part of the main php executable. I know such a conversion process is effectively impossible for some BC breaks; I don't know about this one. This RFC struck me as a better candidate than usual. Thanks for your consideration. - Todd