Hello,
I would like to suggest a new PHP operator, which in my opinion PHP
needs to become more stricter.
At first, I invited nullish coalescing (??) operator, since it made my
code shorter and easier
to read. However, after some time, I realized that this is not a good
way to go, since it makes
my code much less strict. The nullish coalescing function is what I
need, however what I don't
want in some cases is its error suppression function.
Here is an example I use a lot while generating forms:
<input value="<?=$var->prop1->prop2 ?? ''?>" />
I have ?? operator here, mainly because prop2 can be undefined, but in a
lot of cases I know that
prop1 exists, or at least $var. Issue is, that there is no error
outputted even when $var is
undefined and I missed such errors a lot. In my opinion is not good to
learn people to suppress
whatever error might occur in the whole expression.
Back to the suggestion - I suggest creating a new IFNULL operator, which
will simply test if
expression is null. If not, it returns left-hand part, if yes, it
returns right-hand part.
A suggested token for such operator is "??:" as a mix between "??" and
"?:" tokens. Basically
elvis token "?:" but with strict comparison to null, instead of loose
comparison to false.
With new suggested operator a safe way to write expression above, where
I only expect prop2 to
be undefined would look like this:
$var->prop1?->prop2 ??: '';
Notice, that use of newer operator "?->" really fits here. It clearly
marks, what I expect
to be undefined and "??:" operator just takes the role of converting
possible "null" into and
empty string.
What do you think about this? Is it worth to introduce this new operator
to promote more
strictness of PHP? Is it worth to create an RFC for this? I never did an
RFC yet and has not much
experience with C++, since I am mostly Delphi/PHP/JS developer, but I
might try. Still, I would
appreciate a help from someone willing and experienced in RFC creation.
Thank you in advance for your opinions,
David Kolář
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