> On Dec 20, 2020, at 9:09 PM, Ben Ramsey <b...@benramsey.com> wrote: > >> On Dec 19, 2020, at 19:43, tyson andre <tysonandre...@hotmail.com> >> wrote: >> >> It can be useful to verify that the assumption that array keys are >> consecutive integers is correct, both for data that is being passed >> into a module or for validating data before returning it from a >> module. However, because it's currently inconvenient to do that, this >> has rarely been done in my experience. > > I think there are some places where `is_list()` could be unintuitive to > those who don’t understand some of the idiosyncrasies of PHP. > > For example, with > > $a = ['foo', 'bar', 'baz’]; > > `is_list()` will return `true`, but if you run `$a` through `asort()`, > `is_list()` will return `false` because the keys are no longer > consecutive integers, but is there any doubt this is still a list? > Maybe in a pure sense, it’s not, but I think this could be confusing. > > But now, if we do > > $b = array_merge($a, ['qux', 'quux']); > > `$b` is now back to being a list, so `is_list($b)` returns `true`. > > While I understand the convenience `is_list()` provides--I myself have > implemented the opposite of this numerous times (e.g., > `is_dict()`)--it comes close to implying a data type that PHP doesn’t > have, and I think this could give a false sense of type-safety-ness > when using this function to check whether something is a 0-indexed > array. > > Cheers, > Ben >
Would either is_zero_based() or is_zero_indexed() be a reasonable name instead? -Mike P.S. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-based_numbering>
