Hi Rob, > On Sep 10, 2024, at 4:31 AM, Rob Landers <rob@bottled.codes> wrote: > This is very similar (behaviorally) to what I wanted to do with GMP. > Overloading GMP would have given you int-like powers in your type. The > biggest negative feedback I got was that people would abuse it still; so we > need some way to prevent abuse. If you read Jordon's operator overloads RFC, > and my GMP overloading RFC, you can see that users basically need a way to > define how to operate over even just an integer. > > For example, Dollar(1) + Euro(3) is what? Or even Dollar(1) + 1? How does a > developer prevent someone from doing something nonsensical? The language > needs to enforce some rules and/or the developer needs to be able to define > them. These rules need to be intuitive and well reasoned, IMHO.
My arguments were that the use-cases where it is clear and objective what each operator would mean are few and far between[caveat, see below] and so rather than provide general operator overloading PHP should build those use-cases into a core extension. For example, to add Dollar + Euro, having a Money or Currency extension as part of PHP core would make huge sense to me, but not giving everyone the ability to overload operators for every type. I did not follow the GMP discussions as I have never needed to use that extension in any of my own PHP development so I am not familiar with the arguments made and may be mischaracterizing your proposal; correct me if I do. BTW, where is your GMP RFC? I searched for it but could not find it. Did you propose operator overloading for GMP in core, or in userland? > For example, Dollar(1) + Euro(3) is what? Or even Dollar(1) + 1? How does a > developer prevent someone from doing something nonsensical? If the rules are built into core, then the compiler and/or runtime stops them from doing something nonsensical, right? > The language needs to enforce some rules and/or the developer needs to be > able to define them. My argument is that the language should enforce those rules as allowing the userland developer to overload operators will result in every developer defining different rules for their own classes, leading to a tower of babble. And the chances that many developers will do things nonsensical with their operators approaches 100%. I do acknowledge not everyone agrees with me on this, and if so that is their right. If enough people disagree with me then PHP may eventually have general operator overloading. My hope is that there are not enough people who disagree. > These rules need to be intuitive and well reasoned, IMHO." I hope anything that passes an RFC is intuitive and well reasoned because otherwise our governance model is flawed and maybe we need to address that first, if so? -Mike [caveat] — I am aware there are likely numerous use-cases in financial, scientific and/or related fields that could benefit from operator overloading but that would likely never be mainstream enough to make it into PHP core. For this I think making it easier to implement operator overloading in an extension would be a reasonable solution (if that is possible.) Yes, it would require people learn to develop extensions, but working groups for those use-cases could form, and if it could be done in a way that supports Zephir, then writing an extension should not be too hard. https://zephir-lang.com <https://zephir-lang.com/> That, or come up with some way to limit operator overloading to only those things where overloads are objectively obvious, but I really have no idea what kind of limits could do that and I doubt it is even possible. And if none of those things then those communities can get by with what they have always been able to do; use methods and parameters. One thing is clear to me, PHP is never going to overtake Python (or Julia, et. al.) in those communities, so why appeal to a base that is not really interested except on the periphery? OTOH, Python is not likely to overtake PHP for general web development no matter how "popular" it becomes. BTW, why has nobody ever mentioned Zephir on this list (that I am aware of?)
