On Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 11:50 AM, Sara Golemon <poll...@php.net> wrote:

> On Fri, Sep 15, 2017 at 1:35 PM,  <ilija.tov...@me.com> wrote:
> > The `extract` function takes an associative array and
> > puts it into the local symbol table.
> > http://php.net/manual/en/function.extract.php
> >
> > I seriously doubt the usefulness of this function,
> > especially looking at the potential risks. The fact
> > that overwriting the local variables is the default
> > behaviour doesn’t make it any better. I suggest
> > deprecating it in PHP 7.3 and removing it in 8.
> >
> Preface: I despise extract() as well.  It's breaks assumptions for
> both the developer and the runtime.  I save some of my frowniest of
> faces for extract().
>
> That said...
>
> > I can see it’s usefulness in this case.
> > But wouldn’t it be better to implement this by hand
> > in these rare cases (it’s 3 lines of code) instead of
> > encouraging the pollution of the symbol table by
> > unknown input? It’s also clearer since people who
> > don’t know the `extract` function probably don’t
> > expect it to mutate the local symbol table.
> >
> Let's be clear on what that looks like: foreach ($data as $key =>
> $value) { $$key = $value; }
>
> This is SO MUCH WORSE for several reasons, no least of all what
> happens when $data contains keys named 'data', 'key', or 'value'.
>

This is a very good point. I hadn't thought about keys being named that
way, but obviously they could! *grumble*


>
> I'd like to kill extract(), but it does have a reason for being, and I
> couldn't in any good conscience support removing it without a
> replacement that's at least marginally better.
>
> -Sara
>
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