Robert Williams wrote on 15/09/2015 10:38:
variable existence is referenced throughout the docs along with null-ness (e.g., the docs for isset() say it returns true if the variable, "is set and is not null" and if the variable, "exists and has value other than null")
I want to pull this out for a bit more attention: one of the crucial questions in this thread is whether the language is wrong, or just the documentation. There's one particularly wonky passage someone found in the manual that makes it sound like unitialised variables have an intrinsic type when accessed, rather than just referring the reader to the rules on casting null to any given type; when I have time, I will find and reword it.
Documentation can be fixed without backwards- and forwards-compatibility concerns, although the parsed copy of the documentation cached in the heads of the programming community is harder to update.
Changing the language to match the documentation, on the other hand, would be rather odd, so how the manual describes the language can only ever take second place to what the language actually does.
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