Hello Marc, Friday, July 9, 2004, 1:33:02 AM, you wrote:
> Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: >> On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Marc Richards wrote: >> >>>Rasmus Lerdorf wrote: >>> >>>>On Thu, 8 Jul 2004, Marc Richards wrote: >>>> >>>> >>>>>Does it? There are other similar constructs that don't e.g. +=, $a ? $b >>>>>: $c, .=; >>>> >>>> >>>>These have roots in other languages and as such have a familiarity to >>>>them. ?: would be a brand new operator nobody has seen before and one >>>>that looks a lot like the ternary operator which everyone knows about. >>>> >>> >>>We can always create a name for the construct (in the same way the >>>ternary statement has a name) and properly document it. If it becomes >>>useful and popular, people will start calling it that. Proper >>>documentation doesn't require an actual function name. >> >> >> That wasn't my point. The point was that every operator in PHP is common >> and known to the majority of people familiar with any other language. You >> are proposing adding a new operator never seen before. Giving it a name >> won't help because how will people know this name? > They won't. Not until they hear about it or read about it. But that is > true whether it is a function or and operator. Making it a function > won't make everyone magically cogniscent of it. Of course it will be > important to make it easy to search for information about it on PHP.net, > which includes allowing people to search for ?: and providing a courtesy > link from the ternary operator section. >>The way you name an operator is to make it a function. > Huh? I must be misunderstanding what you mean to say, because as far as > I can tell that just isn't true otherwise we would have functions like > add(), subtract() and ternary(). >>>>>I think that part of the reason that these things are so terse is >>>>>because if would defeat the whole point to use a function name; The aim >>>>>is to be concise. >>>> >>>>No, the aim is not conciseness. That has never been PHP's goal. The aim >>>>is clarity. >>> >>>I wasn't saying it was a PHP goal, I was it is the goal of certain >>>constructs like += or .= >> >> >> += is not unique to PHP in any way. Pick 10 random mediocre PHP or >> non-PHP developers out of a crowd and ask then what += does and I bet a >> good number will be able to tell you. Do the same with ?: and you will >> first have to carefully explain that no, this is not the ternary ? : >> operator, but rather a single ?: operator and then ask them to guess at >> what it might do. How many do you think will figure it out? >> >> We don't do things to save people typing a couple of extra characters here >> and there. We do things to lower the WTF factor of the language as much >> as possible. The overall design from the very beginning has been to meet >> the expectations of the common developer. The common developer expects >> common operators such as += ++ -- != to do the right things. > Are you saying PHP will never introduce an operator that doesn't already > exist in a large number of other languages? >> Not having >> these would give us a high WTF factor. Nobody in the world expects a ?: >> operator which is not the ternary operator. And having such an operator >> would indeed be a big surprise and as such its WTF factor is high. >> > To be honest I am kinda hot and cold about how close it is to the > ternary operator. On the one hand the two could be easily confused, but > on the other hand they are in fact very similar in function in which > case we could "market" (meaning document) them as being related. > Ternary operator: > $a = $b ? $b : $c; > Compound Ternary operator: > $a = $b ?: $c; > The only asymmetry being that the "compound ternary operator" doesn't > throw and error if !isset($b) whereas the regular one does...deal > breaker? I dunno. AND ?: won't be ternary....the whole reason for that operators name is that obviously noone had a good name for it. But since it is the only ternary operator (at least in all the languages i know) everybody calls the construct ternary operator. -- Best regards, Marcus mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
