On 20/11/2024 15:45, Theodore Brown wrote:
> Hello Internals,
>
> I recently found out (after 15 years of being a PHP developer) that PHP
> allows using a semicolon rather than a colon after case statements. [1] I.e.:
>
> switch ($value) {
> case 'foo';
> case 'bar':
> case 'baz';
> echo 'foo, bar, or baz';
> break;
> default;
> echo 'Other';
> }
>
> Apparently this syntax has been allowed since at least the PHP 4 days, but
> very few developers know about it.
>
> I ran a script on the top 1000 Composer packages to gauge usage, and out of
> 35,777 total case statements, only 15 in two packages used the alternate
> syntax. All were accidental typos (randomly mixed in with statements using
> the normal syntax), and I opened pull requests to fix both (the first has
> already been merged):
>
> - https://github.com/reactphp/promise/pull/264
> - https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal/issues/3486526
>
> Would it be worthwhile for me to write an RFC to propose deprecating the
> alternate switch case syntax in PHP 8.5?
>
> The main reason for deprecation/removal it is that it causes confusion. A
> developer may think the alternate syntax behaves differently in some way from
> a regular case statement (e.g. preventing fallthrough or something), when it
> actually does not.
>
> Best regards,
> Theodore
>
> Note: The normal case syntax has been part of the PSR-2 coding style since
> 2012, and PHP-CS-Fixer automatically fixes usages of the non-standard syntax
> when using the @PSR2 or newer @PER-CS rulesets.
>
> [1]: https://github.com/php/php-src/issues/15258
Hi
I'm not convinced that getting rid of this is a good idea.
It doesn't seem to cause real harm and as Kamil/cmb pointed out there was a
legit reason to have this.
So I'm not in favor of deprecating this.
Kind regards
Niels
