Hi
On 1/22/26 17:41, Larry Garfield wrote:
More spitballing on my previous reply:
class Test {
public function stuff(int $a) {}
}
(Test)?->stuff(?);
As mentioned in the sibling mail, this is existing syntax and thus
doesn't work.
But if there's no partialing on the method side, it could get abbreviated to:
(?)->stuff(4);
Translates to:
fn(object $__this) => $__this->stuff(4);
Because we don't need to know the type at compile time, and a method-not-found
error would still happen at runtime anyway if necessary.
By that argument you wouldn't need to type the argument as `object`
either (calling methods on a non-object will throw) and the comparison
would become:
$c = (?)->stuff(4);
$c = fn($o) => $o->stuff(4);
Keeping full type information is the main benefit of PFA over “just
write a Closure”. Being able to reorder parameters as part of partial
application is another explicit feature that would not be supported by
that syntax.
That would then be a lot easier to write in cases where you're just dropping a
$this->stuff() call into a pipe chain but want to receive $this.
The use case for partially applying `$this` is in cases where you need a
“function handle”, that's why the examples are ones where the resulting
Closure is passed as a parameter to another function.
Within a pipe chain you would just use the regular `->` operator on the
result of the previous step:
$result = (trim($username)
|> $repository->findBy(name: ?)
)->getId();
It would also naturally support `?->` in case your repository returns
`null` when the user cannot be found.
Best regards
Tim Düsterhus
