On 1-7-2026 23:35, Seifeddine Gmati wrote:
Sorry to butt in, but a) the minimum PHP for WP is PHP 7.4
I got the 8.3 number from their official website:
https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/ , even if the requirement is
7.1, the `[]` syntax works fine there. So, this is not a problem.
Please look again on the same page. The _recommended_ version may be PHP
8.3, the minimum version ("Running on legacy versions?") is PHP 7.4 and
only since recently.
* Code accessibility - it is much quicker to determine whether something is a
list or an array when visually scanning code when the keywords are being used.
`list(` does not mean a "list", PHP has no such type right now. It
means you are destructuring an array, `list("foo" => $bar)` is valid.
so "quicker to determine" is false, you can swap every `list(` usage
with `array(` and the behavior will be exactly the same.
That's just plain untrue. The one is used for creating an array, the
other for destructuring an array.
Swapping `list(` usages with `array(` will in most cases result in a
parse error. Example: https://3v4l.org/O7O4q#veol
* Searchability of the code base - searching for `array(` or `list(` will yield
useful results, searching for `[` will yield a hundred times more results, most
of which are not what one is looking for (array access, assignments etc).
Yes, it would also yield `$typed->array(`, `$posts->list(`, and more.
If you are looking for a specific syntax, you should use AST based
search tools, not grep text. In which case, you can easily grep for
array construction using `[]` over writes/reads using array-access
syntax. This has never been a problem in every other language that
uses `[]` syntax.
Agreed, but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that WP uses
it as an argument against switching to the short syntax.
Smile,
Juliette
