Hi .
I think there is no need to argue on it any more.
Good programmers have the ability to manipulate the variables' types.
But I think it's the icing on the cake if we give the PHP programmer the choice
of whether use explicit types.
For examlpe, we may add a switch in php.ini, let's say, explict_types=On/Off.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Egeberg" <daniel.egeb...@gmail.com>
To: "Arvids Godjuks" <arvids.godj...@gmail.com>
Cc: "Etienne Kneuss" <col...@php.net>; "PHP internals" <internals@lists.php.net>
Sent: Thursday, May 27, 2010 4:45 PM
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Type hinting
> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 10:34, Arvids Godjuks <arvids.godj...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> Please read more carefully - what I mean that is we deal mostly with
>> numbers witch are represented as strings, because all data that comes
>> from external sources are STRING regardless of actual contents - be
>> that integer or float - no matter. I don't want to make my code look
>> like this:
>>
>> function doSomeStuffWithDbData(int $id, string $name, int $someFlag) {
>> }
>>
>> $sql = 'SELECT id, name, some_flag, .... FROM table WHERE .....';
>> $res = mysqli_query($db, $sql);
>> $row = $res->fetch_assoc();
>> doSomeStuffWithDbData((int)$row['id'], $row['name'], (int)$row['some_flag']);
>>
>> And so on. There is no meaning in doing explicit type casts and then
>> check the type again! Because if you have bogus data like "123abc"
>> with type cast you cast it to 123 integer and you function check for
>> integer will pass without any notice!
>>
>> Hm, it just strike me. If you want a strict type checks, you have to
>> convert your data before you pass it when it comes from outside (and
>> it always does by the way! - databases, request data, files). So
>> basically you will first convert it and then pass to functions to
>> avoid inconsistent type errors. And UPS! Magically you have no errors!
>> because $data = '123abc'; $data = (int)$data; results in pure 123 int.
>> No benefit in using type hints at all.
>
> If you don't know whether the user/database provided information you
> have is correct before you pass it along to something else, I would
> say that the code indeed is bad. Unless you regard "123abc" as a valid
> value from your user, don't allow the user to give you that value. If
> you regard it as a valid value, then it's not an int thus you wouldn't
> want to type cast it in the first place.
>
> --
> Daniel Egeberg
>
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