Re: [PHP-DEV] Negative string offset support

[Ilia Alshanetsky]

While you are correct that invalid offset in a string will produce an 
error message. This error message is E_NOTICE, given that our default 
INI error reporting level won't display those it's arguable that very 
few people will see them and consequently do something about it.

> echo $a{strlen($a)-1}; ? is that really that bad.
It is not that bad, but it could be better. Basic tests I've ran show 
that using a strlen() is 30-40% slower and substr() is 20-25% slower 
then $a{-1}.

Ilia
Alan Knowles wrote:
I do worry that at present
$a = "a string";
$p = 0
while( $p < strlen($p) )
  .. do stuff that could do $p-- or $p++ ....
  echo $a{$p};
}
at present that would produce a nice error if you went < 0.. easy to 
spot.. - if -ve was supported it could do unexpected stuff..

Regards
Alan
Ilia Alshanetsky wrote:
I am wondering what are people's opinions on adding support for 
negative string offsets that could be used to access data from the end 
of a string.

Ex. $a = "123"; echo $a[-1]; // would print 3
I don't think we should do this for arrays, since -1 and similar are 
valid array keys, which means adding this support for arrays would 
break BC.

Ilia

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