> I'm not suggesting that we purge NULL from the language. That's > impractical/impossible. I'm suggesting we shouldn't soften the type system > added in 7.0, which discourages its use in most cases, as it should be.
It is a common misconception I've heard several times now that union types is weakening or softening the type system. I want to reiterate that it is already possible to use multiple types. It is already done in the wild. It is done all over our standard library. The union types RFC just allows you to encode the specific types to be passed or returned. In other words it is aiming to make using the dynamic types of PHP safer by allowing you to explicitly write out the options. The Nullable Return Types RFC is basically arguing that the only useful union of types is `T | Null` and only for return types. I've already stated a few of my concerns with that belief and have not been convinced by the rebuttles to change my mind. Also, to specifically address a concern Larry had earlier about nullable types in general: > I am highly, highly sceptical about nullable parameters or returns, and > frankly would rather they were not included in the language. Just to clarify: we already have nullable parameters because of a default of null. It's already in the language and people have asked many times for this functionality to be expanded to include return types. I should have kept a master list every time someone contacted me on github, email, twitter, etc about this so I could easily list them all as references in the relevant RFCs for demand for the feature. -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
