On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 5:17 PM Larry Garfield <la...@garfieldtech.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2020, at 9:15 AM, Sara Golemon wrote: > > On Mon, Apr 20, 2020 at 8:52 AM Larry Garfield <la...@garfieldtech.com> > > wrote: > > > > > On Mon, Apr 20, 2020, at 6:17 AM, Dan Ackroyd wrote: > > > > Here is an RFC for adding a 'mixed' type to the language: > > > > https://wiki.php.net/rfc/mixed_type_v2 > > > > > > > > > > I am not against this, but now that we have Union types what places are > > > there where the currently available type declarations are insufficient? > > > Resource seems like the only remaining gap where you'd be forced to use > > > `mixed` instead of a union. > > > > > > I imagine some type combinations get pretty wide. Like, this is > verbose AF. > > > > null|bool|int|float|string|array|object|resource > > Sure, but how often is that an actual description of what the code > accepts? I... cannot actually envision what code would actually accept > that mess. :-) > I can think of quite a few: - var_dump, print_r, more generally debugging/logging functions and wrappers thereof - json_encode, serialize, and more generally serialization and encoding functions, as return value as well for the inverse operations - database/nosql related functions (bindParam, bindValue) and as return value from generic functions like fetch() - Xpath::evaluate - ldap query functions And wrappers of these extensions could benefit from passing on the mixed type explicitly. > With union types and stringable already on the way, I'm not sure what > other non-hypothetical use cases would still be that fugly that you'd now > need to fall back to `mixed`. (I still think intersection types are > needed, but that's a separate matter.) There may be, but I cannot think of > them. > > > For the long term good of the language I'd prefer type aliases (or > typedefs > > or usings or whatever you want to call them. > > > > use mixed = null|bool|int|float|string|array|object|resource; > > use scalar = null|bool|int|float|string; > > use number = int|float; > > Concur. > > > That said, baking 'mixed' in as an implicit alias of the above isn't > > problematic for that future. > > > > -Sara > > Concur. > > --Larry Garfield > > -- > PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > >
