Dear Theodore and list,
I've been looking into the "Deprecate semicolon after case in switch
statement" PHP 8.5 deprecation [1] with the aim of adding a sniff for
this to the PHPCompatibility standard and I'm noticing an oddity for
which I would like to clarify whether this is intentional or an oversight.
As demonstrated in the example code provided in the deprecation RFC,
both switch `case` condition statements, as well as `default`
statements, can be ended with a semicolon.
So when I first read the RFC, I interpreted the proposal to include both
`case` as well as `default`, as, in my mind, `default` is just a special
`case` in a switch.
However, the RFC explicitly only talked about deprecating the use of a
semicolon after a `case` statement and the implementation has followed
this to the letter. [2]
The net result of this, is that you can now have a `switch` statement
with semicolons terminating `case` statements and `default` statements,
where the former (`case`) will result in a deprecation notice, while the
latter (`default`) will not. For an example, see [3]
This feels inconsistent to me and counter to the intention of the RFC,
which is stated to be:
> Case statements followed by a semicolon can cause confusion, as a
developer may think they behave differently in some way from regular
case statements (e.g. preventing fallthrough), when they do not.
Which leaves me wondering what the reason was not to _also_ deprecate
the use of a semicolon to terminate a `default` statement in a switch ?
I can't find any discussion about this in the original mailing list
thread [4].
Anyone would care to clarify ?
Smile,
Juliette
1:
https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecations_php_8_5#deprecate_semicolon_after_case_in_switch_statement
2:
https://github.com/php/php-src/commit/5f8d648af6ef4e29a3c7f2b2029d08466c12bc6f
3: https://3v4l.org/liFIK/rfc#vgit.master
4: https://externals.io/message/126000
