On Thu, 2 Jul 2026 at 01:11, Juliette Reinders Folmer
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Ahum.... I'm one of the maintainers of the WordPress Coding Standards, which
> is the team which would address these type of syntax changes for WP.
Fair enough, and I'll happily take your word on the WP side. So I
withdraw the "cautious about treating it as WP's position" point.
It doesn't change my conclusion, though. That a group of core
committers has repeatedly blocked short-array syntax for their own
codebase is entirely their prerogative, but it's a project style
decision, not an argument about the language. WordPress doesn't set
PHP's direction, and "one large project prefers the older form" can't
be the reason PHP keeps a redundant construct indefinitely. Styles
adapt to the language at the version they target; that's the normal
direction of the relationship.
> The fact that the `list()` name may be confusing is IMO not a valid argument.
> That keyword has been in use for that particular purpose since a very long
> time in PHP - and even longer in other languages.
I disagree. As far as I'm aware, no other language uses `list` as the
*destructuring construct*; please point me to one if you know it, I'd
be genuinely interested. The languages I know all use a bracket/paren
form with no keyword: JS `[a, b] = arr`, Python `a, b = seq`, Rust
`let [a, b] = arr`, Swift `let (a, b) = t`. Others, such as SML,
OCaml, and Haskell, have a "List" module or type, but again, that's a
different thing.
Perl is the closest relative and I suspect PHP's inspiration, but Perl
writes it as bare parentheses, `($a, $b) = @arr`, and calls the
operation "list assignment," where "list" means the parenthesised list
of values. There's no `list(...)` keyword doing the unpacking.
And that actually cuts the other way: Perl can call it "list
assignment" because Perl has a genuine first-class list. PHP doesn't
have a list type at all, so the keyword names something that doesn't
exist in the language. It destructures an array and even accepts keys
(`list("k" => $v) = $a`), which a genuine "list" would not.
Cheers,
Seifeddine
