On 2-7-2026 0:54, Seifeddine Gmati wrote:
My point was about the *name*. The
accessibility argument was that the keyword lets you tell "a list or
an array" apart at a glance, and that's what i disagree on, because
PHP has no list. `list()` doesn't construct anything; it destructures
an array. The keyword names a type that doesn't exist, and it accepts
keys (`list("foo" => $bar) = $arr`), which a genuine "list" wouldn't.
So "the keyword tells you what it is" is exactly backwards here: the
keyword tells you something false.
The fact that the `list()` name may be confusing is IMO not a valid argument. That keyword has been in use for that particular purpose since a very long time in PHP - and even longer in other languages.
Agreed, but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that WP uses it as an argument against switching to the short syntax.I haven't seen anyone from the WP team make that argument in this thread, so I'd be cautious about treating it as WP's settled position rather than a reason attributed to them.
Ahum.... I'm one of the maintainers of the WordPress Coding Standards, which is the team which would address these type of syntax changes for WP. There have been numerous discussions [1][2][3] within the WP community about allowing/enforcing short array syntax over the years and time and time again, this has been blocked by a select group of WP Core committers not supporting the proposal for the reasons I outlined before (while the overwhelming majority of commenters from the WP community do support the proposal).
1: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/03/26/coding-standards-updates-for-php-5-6/
2: https://make.wordpress.org/core/2019/07/12/php-coding-standards-changes/3: There have also been (more recent) discussions on the WP Slack, in Trac and in various GH issues too...
