Re: Throwing an Error for require expressions in PHP7.x

On 17.06.2016 at 19:58, Rowan Collins wrote: > On 17/06/2016 17:47, Christoph Becker wrote: >> If something is required, one cannot do without it, so there's only one >> course of action, namely to bail out. In my opinion, this is the least >> surprising way to handle missing required files, especially as it always >> has been that way (consider the potential BC break). > > As Alexander has pointed out, there is no BC break, unless you are using > an unconditional catch(Error $e) or catch(Throwable $e) - AKA the > "Pokemon block" (gotta catch 'em all!). Any uncaught Error is still > fatal, so amounts to zero change in behaviour. > > Note that this same line of argument can be applied to many classes of > error which became Throwable Errors in PHP 7.0, such as ParseError. Indeed, but that was a major version – this suggestion is about PHP 7.x. >> Frankly, I can't see a single >> good reason to replace the fatal error with an exception for require, >> but leave include etc. alone. And if include would throw an exception, >> I don't see the use of changing require at all. > > Because changing include *would* be a breaking change, and in fact make > the distinction between require and include rather pointless, because > the whole point of include is that it *doesn't* emit anything fatal if > the file doesn't exist. > > The whole point of exceptions / throwables is that they are fatal by > default, but handlable in a consistent manner if there is some situation > that requires it. > > As for use cases, consider that you might not be the author of the code > containing the "require" statement - you might be including some third > party library that doesn't something wonky, and need to be robust. Or, > as Alexander points out, you might want to execute "finally" blocks on > the way out, even though the application is ultimately going to crash. Okay, I see now that there are some use cases, but would these justify the potential BC? I'm not sure. -- Christoph M. Becker