To answer my own question: the entire RFC is a no-go in its current state.
On 18 March 2016 at 10:09, Marco Pivetta <ocram...@gmail.com> wrote:
> That said, I have a few quite common use-cases that arise and that are a
> bit problematic, both because they are hacks and because they are actually
> used in large projects.
>
> Specifically, I'm worried about two particular use-cases:
>
> * unsetting properties
> * by-ref property assignment
>
> To clarify, un-setting properties allows us to hide properties completely,
> loading them on a per-usage basis:
>
> class Foo {
> public int $bar;
> public function __construct() {
> unset($this->bar); // is this operation legal? For BC compliance,
> I'd expect that to be the case
> }
> public function __get(string $name)
> {
> initialize_properties_here($this); // external thing connecting to
> db, loading files, yadda yadda
> }
> }
>
> var_dump((new Foo())->bar); // what happens here? can
> `initialize_properties_here` actually assign a non-int to `$bar`? Will the
> type safety still work?
>
See https://3v4l.org/bsHXH/rfc#tabs - unset() doesn't work, and that breaks
some basic PHP semantics that are covered by phpt tests, but just for the
case of typed properties.
> The by-ref property assignment is a bit trickier, but can probably be
> worked around with some overhead (re-assigning).
> Here's what is going on:
>
> class Foo {
> public int $bar;
> public function __construct() {
> unset($this->bar);
> }
> public function __get(string $name)
> {
> $this->bar = 123; // default value
> $props = ['bar' => & $this->bar]; // is this operation now
> considered illegal?
> initialize_properties_here($props); // external thing connecting
> to db, loading files, yadda yadda
> }
> }
>
See https://3v4l.org/sKqYb/rfc#tabs - by-ref assignment is forcefully
disabled, and that breaks some more PHP semantics just for the case of
typed properties.
To sum it up, the RFC has one major problem: it focuses on the WHEN
assignments happen, rather than just checking WHAT is assigned.
I think the scope of the proposal needs to be reduced strictly to type
checking.
As it stands, this is too magic (and I do qu
Cheers,
Marco Pivetta
http://twitter.com/Ocramius
http://ocramius.github.com/
