Greetings! Thanks for the awesome RFC, I very much like the suggestion and
would highly welcome it in general. But since the proposed update is
really huge, I've got some concerns about some specific use-cases of it.
My main concern is about variable binding / pinning. To me personally your
current suggestion looks very counter-intuitive, which means that when I
see a variable inside the patter, I would strongly expect it as a reference
to an existing variable as part of the pattern:
$b = 5;
$a = 3;
if ($a is $b) {...}
Which translates to if $a === $b. Of course, same relates to more complex
patterns.
On Sun, Jun 14, 2026 at 9:08 PM Larry Garfield <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hi folks. Ilija and I would like to present our latest RFC endeavor, pattern
> matching:
>
> https://wiki.php.net/rfc/pattern-matching
>
> You may note the date on the RFC is from 2020. Yes, we really have had this
> one in-progress for 5 years. :-) (Though it was inactive for many of those
> years, in fairness.) Pattern matching was intended as the next follow up to
> Enums, as it's a stepping stone toward full ADT support. However, we also
> feel it has enormous benefit on its own for simplifying complex comparisons.
>
> This RFC has been through numerous iterations, including a full
> implementation rewrite just recently that made a number of features much
> easier. We have therefore included two patterns that were previously slated
> for later inclusion but turned out to be trivially easy in the new approach.
> (Variable pinning and numeric comparison.)
>
> Nonetheless, there are two outstanding questions on which we are looking for
> feedback.
>
> Naturally given the timing, we will not be calling a vote until at least late
> January, regardless of how the discussion goes. So, plenty of time to
> express your support. :-)
>
> --
> Larry Garfield
> [email protected]
