At 00:28 27/05/2010, Davey Shafik wrote:
You could just as easily say to do:function foo($bar) { $bar = (int) $bar; } as: function foo($bar) { if (!is_int($bar)) { // error } } Why bother with either if that's the case?
I don't think there's any argument that what we're proposing to add to the language can already be done using existing functionality. That's true whether we're talking about strict type checking, auto-converting type hinting, or pretty much any other idea we might come up with.
There are several reasons we still want to add this feature - reducing the burden of validating input, making it clearer to the user what the function expects (from the API), and in the future - it might allow for certain optimizations.
When we come to evaluate which solution we should pick, we should go for the solution that is the most consistent with the rest of the language and that gives us the most bang for the buck. Auto-converting type hinting falls in that category - it's the most consistent with the rest of the language, and it's the most useful behavior in the vast majority of cases - it stands a chance to become widely used. For every case where you'd explicitly care about the zval.type (such as when you need to differentiate between false and zero), you'd have dozens of cases where you won't. Adding language level support for those rare cases simply doesn't make sense. The marginal gain is minimal. The added complexity and confusion is very high.
I'm strictly against having two solutions. It's the worst outcome we could reach IMHO - it means we're unable to decide which is better, so we support both (kind of like a hi-tech version of http://bit.ly/9I8dHw). I think it's the one solution that's worse than implementing strict typing only - it does mean that I would actually support having strict typing only over having both. Still, I think having auto-converting type hints is by far the best solution.
Can anybody share with us *common* cases where strict typing would be necessary, and the proposed auto-converting type hints won't do?
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