On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 1:18 PM Alain D D Williams <a...@phcomp.co.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 12:00:18PM +0100, Rowan Collins wrote: > > > Perl is a notable contrast: the types of operands are deduced based on > the > > operator, but there are different operators to force them to different > > types. So `23 < 4` and `"23" < "4"` are both numeric comparisons, so > return > > false; but `23 lt 4` and `"23" lt "4"` do string comparisons, and return > > true. That way the user's intent is clear, but you don't have to manually > > cast values or remember how different combinations will be interpreted. > > IMHO the Perl way is better: the different operators mean that I will get > what I > want, I don't need to worry about an accidental type juggle; it is also > (presumably) faster as the run time does not need to: look at a string, > decide > if it could be a number and maybe change what it does. > > The big problem is backwards compatibility, so new operators would be > needed: > > string compare: lt, gt, etc, not much of a problem > > numeric compare: #< #> would be nice were it not that # means comment. > > > Note that using a directive means there is no inherit backward compatibility issue. We're talking about copy/pasted code sniplets only. Solving the issues presented, maintaining BC, without the use of a directive would require the addition of multiple type-specific operators. String compare, numeric compare, array compare, etc, etc. PHP code would become unrecognizable. I'm not a fan of that alternative. Arnold
