Hi
Am 2026-07-01 21:25, schrieb Seifeddine Gmati:
FWIW: I still have a rough draft to make `array()` (or rather: all
non-object types) proper functions that effectively would “stand in”
as
cast operators. For `array()` specifically this would allow a
named-argument style of defining arrays with “unquoted keys”:
`array(foo: 1, bar: 2)`.
This would require deprecating `array()` first anyway, no? Otherwise,
dealing with it during parsing would be hacky (looking ahead at
`array(foo` for `:` or `=>` or `,` or `)` to decide if it's an array
or a function call, possible, but hacky think ).
It's not particularly pretty, but possible. The `array()` syntax will
not actually be a function call, it will just look like one. Basically
the `:` syntax can just parse into the same AST as the `=>` syntax, the
grammar just needs to make sure that they may not be mixed. The array()
function will be made available in addition to support `\array` (i.e.
with a fully-qualified name) and `array(...)` (i.e. a first class
callable).
My rough draft is in https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/18613, I think
there are some issues still with properly compiling the array, because
the AST node for `=>` takes the two sides in different order compared to
named arguments and I wanted to document the AST structure first (and
then got distracted by more important things).
Best regards
Tim Düsterhus
