Stanislav Malyshev wrote:
It would give you similar benefits to input type hinting, but instead
of "Functions are now able to force parameters to be objects...", it
would also read "Calling functions are now able to expect return types
to be objects...". If a function was defined to return object Z, but
instead returned false, then obviously there is something wrong and it
could be caught before calling code sees it expecting it to be
something else.
Catching language-level error in application code is usually harder than
just handling it in user code. And if you are talking about distinction
between false/null and actual object, language level is the wrong level
to catch such things.
If you handle the error in runtime, you could have the check as well. If
you don't, the script breaks anyway, so it is not going to help you much.
Even more, the return value is the product of the module code, while
input values are product of the outside code. So when you say "I'm going
to process only type X, and I make a requirement for others to pass only
X to me", it makes for me more sense than saying "I'm going to return
only type X so I'm making restriction for myself to return only type X".
The latter is more like declaring variable types, which have its
functions in compiled languages but usually is not happening in dynamic
interpreted languages.
Also, since from the client side there's no way to check if the function
you are calling actually does have the return type restriction, it's
quite hard to program basing on that from the client side. So you
actually check it in one place (library) and use it in entirely
different place (client) which is usually bad idea since the client
becomes too reliant on internal details of the library.
If I, or someone else decided to make a patch for this, and assuming
it worked exactly like I described, would it be accepted?
I don't know... I personally don't see much use for it, but others may
disagree.
That is true, there is absolutely no reason to say "I'm going to return
only type X so I'm making restriction for myself to return only type X".
However, this feature is geared towards interfaces, so that statement
becomes "Any interface that implements me must provide a method X that
takes Y as input and must return Z".
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