Re: RFC - Array slice syntactic sugar

On 20 March 2015 at 22:12, Stanislav Malyshev <smalyshev@gmail.com> wrote: > You're not using the keys in foreach, so why you need to preserve them? This was merely an example of the features equal part in current code, not a real life use case. Using the new syntax will keep the keys preserved, therefore any example showing how to do the same *must* do the same, which preserving keys does. This may be not so easy to implement - imagine passing $array[*1:4] by > reference. This would be the same as doing $array[array_keys($old_array)[1]] = $new_array[0]; $array[array_keys($old_array)[2]] = $new_array[1]; $array[array_keys($old_array)[3]] = $new_array[2]; $array[array_keys($old_array)[4]] = $new_array[3]; The new syntax helps clean that up, by doing: $array[*1:4] = [1,2,3,4]; There is nothing to pass by reference that is different, the array is still $array, it is just having the values replaced in bulk by index (not by key) This sort of code would be needed: <?php $old_array = [0 => 1, 1 => 2, 5 => 3, 7 => 4, 4 => 5, 2 => 6, 14 => 7, 55 => 8]; $new_array_values = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']; // To replace the third, fourth and fifth element. $old_array[array_keys($old_array)[3]] = $new_array_values[0]; $old_array[array_keys($old_array)[4]] = $new_array_values[1]; $old_array[array_keys($old_array)[5]] = $new_array_values[2]; var_dump($old_array); Instead of, what is in my opinion, much cleaner: <?php $old_array = [0 => 1, 1 => 2, 5 => 3, 7 => 4, 4 => 5, 2 => 6, 14 => 7, 55 => 8]; $new_array_values = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']; $old_array[*3:5] = $new_array_values; var_dump($old_array); There is the array_splice method that can do the same thing, however this to me is less obvious as to what is happening: <?php $old_array = [0 => 1, 1 => 2, 5 => 3, 7 => 4, 4 => 5, 2 => 6, 14 => 7, 55 => 8]; $new_array_values = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz']; // To replace the third, fourth and fifth element. array_splice($old_array, 3, 3, $new_array_values); var_dump($old_array);