Hello Internals,
Is there any particular reason why the substr() function doesn't accept a
null $length like mb_substr() does? It seems the behavior to read through
the end of the string can only be controlled by the presence or absence of
the $length parameter: https://3v4l.org/YpuO1
I discovered this discrepancy between the two methods while attempting to
create a specialized string wrapper class with a method like this:
public function getSubstring(int $start, ?int $length = null): string
{
if ($this->isMultibyte) {
return mb_substr($this->line, $start, $length, $this->encoding);
} else {
return substr($this->line, $start, $length);
}
}
This method would not work as expected without additional boilerplate like:
public function getSubstring (int $start, ?int $length = null): string
{
if ($this->isMultibyte) {
return mb_substr($this->line, $start, $length, $this->encoding);
} elseif ($length === null) {
return substr($this->line, $start);
} else {
return substr($this->line, $start, $length);
}
}
Or:
public function getSubstring (int $start, ?int $length = null): string
{
if ($this->isMultibyte) {
return mb_substr($this->line, $start, $length, $this->encoding);
} else {
return substr($this->line, $start, $length ??
(strlen($this->line) - $start));
}
}
Are there any historical reasons preventing substr() from accepting a null
$length like mb_substr() does? I'd be happy to write the RFC and take a
stab at the implementation if there's interest in such a change.
Regards,
Colin O'Dell
[email protected]
