> On Jun 10, 2024, at 20:35, Valentin Udaltsov <udaltsov.valen...@gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> Hi, internals!
> 
> 9 years have passed since the last discussions of case sensitive PHP: 
> https://externals.io/message/79824 and https://externals.io/message/83640.
> Here I would like to revisit this topic.
> 
> What is case-sensitive in PHP 8.3:
> - variables
> - constants (all since 
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/case_insensitive_constant_deprecation)
> - class constants
> - properties
> 
> What is case-insensitive in PHP 8.3:
> - namespaces
> - functions
> - classes (including self, parent and static relative class types)
> - methods (including the magic ones)
> 
> Pros:
> 1. no need to convert strings to lowercase inside the engine for name lookups 
> (a small performance and memory gain)
> 2. better fit for case sensitive platforms that PHP code is mostly run on 
> (Linux)
> 3. uniform handling of ASCII and non-ASCII symbols (currently non-ASCII 
> symbols in names are case sensitive: https://3v4l.org/PWkvG)
> 4. PSR-4 compatibility 
> (https://www.php-fig.org/psr/psr-4/#:~:text=All%20class%20names%20MUST%20be%20referenced%20in%20a%20case%2Dsensitive%20fashion)
> 
> Cons:
> 1. pain for users, obviously
> 2. a backward compatibility layer might be difficult to implement and/or have 
> a performance penalty
> 
> On con 1. I think today PHP users are much more prepared for the change:
> - more and more projects adopted namespaces and PSR-4 autoloading via 
> Composer that never supported case-insensitivity 
> (https://github.com/composer/composer/issues/1803, 
> https://github.com/composer/composer/issues/8906) which forced to mind casing
> - static analyzers became more popular and they do complain about the wrong 
> casing (see https://psalm.dev/r/fbdeee2f38 and 
> https://phpstan.org/r/1789a32d-d928-4311-b02e-155dd98afbd4)
> - Rector appeared (it can be used to automatically prepare the codebase for 
> the next PHP version)
> 
> On con 2. While considering different transition options proposed in prior 
> discussions (compilation flag, ini option, deprecation notice) I stumbled 
> upon Nikita's comment (https://externals.io/message/79824#79939):
> May I recommend to only target class and class-like names for an initial RFC? 
> Those have the strongest argument in favor of case-sensitivity given
> how current autoloader implementations work - essentially the 
> case-insensitivity doesn't properly work anyway in modern code....I'd also 
> appreciate having a voting option for removing case-insensitivity right away, 
> as opposed to throwing E_STRICT/E_DEPRECATED. If we want to change this, I 
> personally would rather drop it right away than start throwing E_STRICT 
> warnings that would make the case-insensitive usage impossible anyway.
> It makes a lot of sense to me: a fairly simple change in the core and no 
> performance penalty. At the same time, a gradual approach will reduce the 
> stress.
> 
> So the plan for 8.4 might be to just drop case insensitivity for class names 
> and that's it... Let's discuss that!


I’m not saying I agree with or support this, but I think your proposal has a 
better chance of being accepted if you target PHP 9.0 instead of 8.4.

Cheers,
Ben

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