On Wed, Jun 17, 2026, at 23:32, Rob Landers wrote:
> Hello internals,
>
> I was reminded of my records RFC today, and one of the features of the RFC
> was "short constructors" generally called "primary constructors" in C#/Kotlin.
>
> They would look like this:
>
> class Point(public int $x, int $id = 0) extends Base($id);
>
> Which is just sugar for this:
>
> class Point extends Base {
> public function __construct(public int $x, int $id = 0) {
> parent::__construct($id);
> }
> }
>
> or this:
>
> class Point extends Base {
> public int $x;
> public function __construct(int $x, int $id = 0) {
> $this->x = $x;
> parent::__construct($id);
> }
> }
>
> A class with a primary constructor *may not* have a defined `__construct`
> function. Any special initialization must be done with hooks:
>
> class Temperature(
> public float $celsius {
> set {
> if ($value < -273.15) {
> throw new ValueError('below absolute zero');
> }
> $this->celsius = $value;
> }
> }
> ) {}
>
> new Temperature(20.0); // ok
> new Temperature(-300.0); // ValueError: below absolute zero
>
> I'm sending this email to the list to gather additional feedback before
> pursuing a formal RFC proposal.
>
> — Rob
I just realized that my examples did not demonstrate the classes with a body,
but they may also have a body!
— Rob
