Re: [RFC] Scalar Type Hints

From: Date: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 00:26:02 +0000
Subject: Re: [RFC] Scalar Type Hints
References: 1 2 3 4  Groups: php.internals 
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ZF2 completely broke compatibility with ZF1 users, so I think this is a bad example. Regards Thomas Stanislav Malyshev wrote on 02.01.2015 01:15: > Hi! > >> Yeah, it’s a problem. I think some breakage here is inevitable, >> unfortunately. Some of the classes with these names are stand-ins for >> scalar type hints, so that code can “just” migrate to using actual >> hints. But this doesn’t apply to all of them. > > Breaking ZF2 and all software built on it is not "some breakage", it's a > serious issue which would produce a big barrier for PHP 7 migration. And > looks like there are more frameworks that do the same. This would be a > barrier to PHP 7 adoption, and note that is even for people that > couldn't care less for scalar typing. We'd find ourselves in python 3 > situation - where people would be glad to upgrade but they use library X > and it doesn't work and they have no idea how to fix it and they keep > all their development on the old version and the new one never catches > on. It'd be a shame if we spend all this effort on PHP 7 and get no > adoption since people can't run their existing code on it. > >> We could choose to simply not prohibit them as class names, but that >> creates a weird inconsistency where you can make ‘class Integer’ yet >> ‘function foo(Integer $a)’ hints against the integer type, not your >> class. Type hints are very widely used, so I doubt this would help >> anyone, and we’d still be breaking existing code type hinting against >> such classes. > > I'd rather make the hints case sensitive. In fact, of two BC breakages > making classes case sensitive may be the lesser one (I'm not a big fan > of either but at least the modern frameworks would probably all work and > if some code does not it's possible to auto-fix it). > >> There’s not much we can do really. I suppose there is one positive >> outcome, in that hopefully when broken code is updated to work, it >> might have more descriptive class names. :) > > The issue here is that people that now use ZF2 or other framework like > that won't rewrite it. They would just stay on PHP 5. > -- > Stas Malyshev > smalyshev@gmail.com > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php >

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