On 19/09/2022 20:10, Olle Härstedt wrote:
More for users to learn? Don't you mean less, haha? This is an
arbitrary limitation of heredoc, that we can remove (it might not be
arbitrary from a yacc perspective, someone would have to explain that
if so).
I don't think the rules for heredoc are arbitrary, but they are quite
specific: the end delimiter has to appear at the *start* of a line, so
it can appear anywhere else in the text without prematurely ending the
string:
$foo = <<<FOO
This is a normal heredoc
this is not the end FOO
this is:
FOO;
(Prior to PHP 7.3, only certain characters could appear *after* the end
delimiter, but that's now more relaxed, and there's some clever rules
around indenting.)
As far as I can see, a single-line heredoc would need to be a new
syntax, with its own syntax rules. Something like
* If there is at least one non-whitespace character after <<<FOO but
before the next newline, this is a one-line heredoc
* If so, the heredoc content is everything up to and including the last
occurrence of "FOO", followed by an optional semicolon, and a required
newline
* If "FOO" does not appear again before the next newline; or there is
other text between "FOO" and the newline, that is a syntax error
For instance, the following would presumably be valid:
$foo = <<<FOO one-line heredoc ending at end of line FOO
;
$foo = <<<FOO one-line heredoc with semicolon FOO;
$foo = <<<FOO this is a heredoc containing FOO and other text FOO;
$foo = <<<FOO // I guess this is a string not a comment? FOO;
But the following would not:
$foo = <<<FOO one-line heredoc not ended
$foo = <<<FOO this heredoc contains FOO and then doesn't end
$foo = <<<FOO mixing one-line and multi-line syntax doesn't make sense
FOO;
$foo = <<<FOO this heredoc looks like it ends FOO . 'but actually it
doesn't';
Perhaps you disagree with some of those rules and examples, but
hopefully can see that the rules would need defining, and therefore
learning.
I don't know about other editors, but PhpStorm at least also recognises an
in-line comment explicitly labelling any string, which if anything seems m
ore explicit:
$query = /** @lang mysql */"SELECT * FROM foo";
Pja. I wouldn't call it more or less explicit than heredoc notation, personally.
It's more explicit in the sense that it is syntax dedicated for that
purpose, in a standard format. If I write <<<FOO hello FOO, there's no
way to know if "foo" is the name of a language I'm hoping to label, or
just a token which I know doesn't appear in my content; if I write /**
@lang foo */"hello", there's no ambiguity, even if you've never heard of
"foo" as a language.
Regards,
--
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]
