Hello internals, This discussion will use my previous RFC as the starting point for conversation: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/user_defined_operator_overloads
There has been discussion on list recently about revisiting the topic of operator overloads after the previous effort which I proposed was declined. There are a variety of reasons, I think, this is being discussed, both on list and off list. 1. As time has gone on, more people have come forward with use cases. Often they are use cases that have been mentioned before, but it has become more clear that these use cases are more common than was suggested previously. 2. Several voters, contributors, and participants have had more time (years now) to investigate and research some of the related issues, which naturally leads to changes in opinion or perspective. 3. PHP has considered and been receptive toward several RFCs since my original proposal which update the style of PHP in ways which are congruent with the KIND of language that has operator overloads. I mentioned recently that I would not participate in another operator overload RFC unless I felt that the views of internals had become more receptive to the topic, and after some discussion with several people off-list, I feel that it is at least worth discussing for the next version. Operator overloads has come up as a missing feature in several discussions on list since the previous proposal was declined. This includes: [RFC] [Discussion] Support object type in BCMath [1] Native decimal scalar support and object types in BcMath [2] Custom object equality [3] pipes, scalar objects and on? [4] [RFC][Discussion] Object can be declared falsifiable [5] The request to support comparison operators (>, >=, ==, !=, <=, <, <=>) has come up more frequently, but particularly in discussion around linear algebra, arbitrary precision mathematics, and dimensional numbers (such as currency or time), the rest of the operators have also come up. Typically, these use cases are themselves very niche, but the capabilities operator overloads enable would be much more widely used. From discussion on list, it seems likely that very few libraries would need to implement operator overloads, but the libraries that do would be well used and thus MANY devs would be consumers of operator overloads. I want to discuss what changes to the previous proposal people would be seeking, and why. The most contentious design choice of the previous proposal was undoubtedly the `operator` keyword and the decision to make operator overload implementations distinct from normal magic methods. For some of the voters who voted yes on the previous RFC, this was a "killer feature" of the proposal, while for some of the voters who voted no it was the primary reason they were against the feature. There are also several technical and tangentially related items that are being worked on that would be necessary for operator overloads (and were originally included in my implementation of the previous RFC). This includes: 1. Adding a new opcode for LARGER and LARGER_OR_EQUAL so that operand position can be preserved during ALL comparisons. 2. Updating ZEND_UNCOMPARABLE such that it has a value other than -1, 0, or 1 which are typically reserved during an ordering comparison. 3. Allowing values to be equatable without also being orderable (such as with matrices, or complex numbers). These changes could and should be provided independent of operator overloads. Gina has been working on a separate RFC which would cover all three of these issues. You can view the work-in-progress on that RFC here: https://github.com/Girgias/php-rfcs/blob/master/comparison-equality-semantics.md I hope to start off this discussion productively and work towards improving the previous proposal into something that voters are willing to pass. To do that, I think these are the things that need to be discussed in this thread: 1. Should the next version of this RFC use the `operator` keyword, or should that approach be abandoned for something more familiar? Why do you feel that way? 2. Should the capability to overload comparison operators be provided in the same RFC, or would it be better to separate that into its own RFC? Why do you feel that way? 3. Do you feel there were any glaring design weaknesses in the previous RFC that should be addressed before it is re-proposed? 4. Do you feel that there is ANY design, version, or implementation of operator overloads possible that you would support and be in favor of, regardless of whether it matches the approach taken previously? If so, can you describe any of the core ideas you feel are most important? Jordan External Links: [1]: https://externals.io/message/122735 [2]: https://externals.io/message/122994 [3]: https://externals.io/message/121387 [4]: https://externals.io/message/120822 [5]: https://externals.io/message/118971
