Re: PHP7 Coalesce operator

It’s not hate, I happen to like that ?? was added. I’m not raising a concern nor asking for a change in its behavior. Rather, I’m asking for another, similar operator that’s based on truth-evaluation (with PHP’s tender, loving conversion rules baked in), in *addition* to ?? which tests for null/undefined exclusively. > On Nov 23, 2015, at 12:08 PM, Phil Sturgeon <pjsturgeon@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 9:52 AM, shadda <shadda@gmail.com> wrote: >> Er, that should read, “anything non (null, false, undefined) is true” >> >>> On Nov 23, 2015, at 11:51 AM, shadda <shadda@gmail.com> wrote: >>> >>> Hey, thanks for responding. >>> >>> However, I still think that misses the point, or at least the true utility of what >>> I’m proposing. >>> >>> In practice, you can ignore E_NOTICE and php will happily treat null and !isset() as >>> the same thing in *most* cases, so that’s not a good indicator of truthiness. >>> >>> Basically in ECMA, anything non-null, false, or undefined is true. PHP is very similar >>> in that regard, but our reliance on E_NOTICE to (ahem) enforce isset() checks is why, I assume, >>> we’re introducing the ?? operator to begin with. >>> >>> I just think it’d be nice to have a small variation on this feature that was less >>> concerned with a (defined|null) semantic and more in keeping with PHP’s overall handling of >>> implicit type conversion in expressions. >>> >>> Does that make more sense? >>> >>>> On Nov 22, 2015, at 12:41 PM, Andrea Faulds <ajf@ajf.me> wrote: >>>> >>>> Hi, >>>> >>>> shadda wrote: >>>>> I had a question-suggestion based around the cool new operator we’re getting >>>>> in PHP7, the ?? operator, which as I understand it is the functional equivalent to perl’s // >>>>> operator; in that they both test for whether or not a variable is defined, rather than it’s >>>>> truthiness. >>>> >>>> This is not strictly correct. Though something of a misnomer, the 'null >>>> coalesce operator' checks if a variable doesn't exist, but also that it is not null, i.e. >>>> it functions like isset(). >>>> >>>> Thanks. >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Andrea Faulds >>>> http://ajf.me/ >>>> >>>> -- >>>> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List >>>> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php >>>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List >> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php >> > > Ignoring E_NOTICE is generally considered bad practice by many, and > turning them off just to use ternaries instead of null coalesce (a > feature we already have) doesn't seem like a benefit. > > The ?? is used the same as "a = b || c" in Ruby or JS. Doing that in > PHP wouldn't work well as || works a bit differently, so ?? is used > instead, just like C and Swift. > > Basically... it's all good. And even if you hate it you're months too > late to raise a concern. :)