Hello Internals, I'd like to know what would be people's feelings towards having a `numeric` type. I remember reading the nullable casting RFC ( https://wiki.php.net/rfc/nullable-casting) and it's discussion ( https://externals.io/message/105122). Although I would very much prefer to have nullable casting, it seems to be a bit controversial and perhaps Numeric Type could be a middle ground solution.
The primary intent would be to safely pass around input that usually comes from HTTP, CI or Database. Whenever interacting with these data providers, string is a common format. `is_int` will not return true for integer values that are string, instead we need to rely on `is_numeric`. Similarly, I think we could benefit from having `foo(?numeric $value)` as a type-safe mechanism to transfer data around without having to forcefully check for numeric value before casting. If we simply `(int) $value`, we may end up casting `null` to `0`. Type-hitting `?numeric` could be a compromise. ``` foo(?int $number); foo($_GET['param']); // TypeError: foo() expects int or null, string given foo((int) $_GET['param']); // null becomes 0 foo($_GET['param'] ? (int) $_GET['param'] : null); // expected behavior bar(?numeric $number); bar($_GET['param']); // would work with any value that passes is_numeric() ``` I also think this approach have a benefit over PHP 8 Union Type (int|string) because is_numeric() does not return true for string values and for consistency the `numeric` type-hint would behave similarly. Thoughts? -- Marco Aurélio Deleu
