Hi
Am 2026-04-25 12:33, schrieb LamentXU:
I therefore would like to introduce a RFC to deprecate the metaphone
function. Maintaining this legacy function in the core provides little
value to modern PHP applications, and users could be advised to switch
to more accurate alternatives. Even in the case where strict backward
compatibility with core functions is preferred, people can still use
soundex instead.
RFC link: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecate-metaphone
I am happy to know your thoughts on this.
I believe the deprecation of individual functions is better suited for
the bulk deprecation RFC at
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecations_php_8_6, because there is often
not much to discuss and having individual RFCs for everything just adds
overhead.
That said: I don't think there is a strong argument in favor of
deprecating metaphone. Yes, the algorithm is dated. Yes, we likely would
not add this kind of functionality to the stdlib nowadays. But it's not
*actively* harmful as far as I can tell. It does exactly what the name
implies and it's not a security-sensitive function where we would want
to steer users towards safer options.
Best regards
Tim Düsterhus
