From a logical standpoint, I think this could be very confusing. To me, for one, square brackets imply reference, not assignment. Taking something that means "take something out of the array" and now using it to mean "put something in the array" makes the language a bit less self-consistent... and, as Rasmus mentioned, less readable. Conciveness is not everything--one also has to be able to understand his own code after he's written it :-)
Cheers,
Marco
Andi Gutmans wrote:
Hi Christian,
Personally I don't like having two ways of doing things. It makes it harder for people to read scripts.
However, I think the proposed syntax is significantly more elegant than today's array() which makes me think twice about the idea and possibly making an exception to the rule. I think it'll improve the look of PHP scripts. Also I think people calling methods using call_user_method([$obj, "method"]); will find it sexier than the array() syntax.
I guess I think it'd be interesting to see what other's think. Also, another point to check is if list() can also be converted into [] because having a hybrid wouldn't be too nice.
Andi
At 12:33 AM 11/5/2003 +0100, Christian Schneider wrote:
I propose to add an alternative (backward compatible) short array creation syntax:
$a = [ 1, 2, 3 ]; and $a = [ 'a' => 42, 'b' => "foo" ];
It can also be used in function calls: img(['src' => "logo.gif", 'alt' => "Logo"]);
Reason behind this change: Arrays are used a lot and should therefore have as little syntactic overhead as possible. And I think the short syntax is also easier to read and write.
A patch for the parser is trivial and is attached for Zend2.
Note: I checked the newsgroup archive but couldn't find a discussion about this. After not hearing back about my proposed enhancement to debug_backtrace() and the dangling comma for function call parameters being rejected I wonder if I'm using the right mailing list for this :-)
- Chris
Index: Zend/zend_language_parser.y
===================================================================
RCS file: /repository/ZendEngine2/zend_language_parser.y,v
retrieving revision 1.127
diff -u -r1.127 zend_language_parser.y
--- Zend/zend_language_parser.y 19 Oct 2003 08:38:48 -0000 1.127
+++ Zend/zend_language_parser.y 4 Nov 2003 23:32:12 -0000
@@ -581,6 +581,7 @@
| '@' { zend_do_begin_silence(&$1 TSRMLS_CC); } expr { zend_do_end_silence(&$1 TSRMLS_CC); $$ = $3; }
| scalar { $$ = $1; }
| T_ARRAY '(' array_pair_list ')' { $$ = $3; }
+ | '[' array_pair_list ']' { $$ = $2; }
| '`' encaps_list '`' { zend_do_shell_exec(&$$, &$2 TSRMLS_CC); }
| T_PRINT expr { zend_do_print(&$$, &$2 TSRMLS_CC); }
;
-- 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
