PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#1

Post by bpierre » Tue, May 31, 2011, 8:39 PM UTC

PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.
wiki.php.net

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#2

Post by TamDenholm » Tue, May 31, 2011, 8:58 PM UTC

I've been wanting this for a long time, seems like a no brainer to me. It'd be nice to add some of the nice syntactic sugar that other languages have.

Kinda strange that they have both readable and unreadable listed as both pro and con...

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#3

Post by samdalton » Tue, May 31, 2011, 9:01 PM UTC

$confusion = ['pro' : 'readable', 'contra' : 'unreadable']

-edit- beaten to the punch on that one!

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#4

Post by oinksoft » Tue, May 31, 2011, 9:06 PM UTC

  Contra
    ...
    Not searchable through search engines

That's a ridiculous argument.

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#5

Post by gdulli » Tue, May 31, 2011, 9:06 PM UTC

TamDenholm wrote: post #2

I've been wanting this for a long time, seems like a no brainer to me. It'd be nice to add some of the nice syntactic sugar that other languages have. Kinda strange that they have both readable and unreadable listed as both pro and con...

I don't think that a concise method of working with arrays should be thought of as syntactic sugar, not if you mean it in a pejorative way.

I found array_map, array_filter, array_key_exists, array_this, array_that painful to write, but never felt that I was gaining any sort of readability for it.

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#6

Post by config_yml » Tue, May 31, 2011, 9:13 PM UTC

TamDenholm wrote: post #2

I've been wanting this for a long time, seems like a no brainer to me. It'd be nice to add some of the nice syntactic sugar that other languages have. Kinda strange that they have both readable and unreadable listed as both pro and con...

The pro/cons are arguments extracted from the mailing list. So the guys on the pro side said it was readable, the guys on the contra side said unreadable.

I think it would have been a nice addition...

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#7

Post by whichdan » Tue, May 31, 2011, 9:14 PM UTC

    $a1 = [1, 2, 3];
    $b1 = ['foo': 'orange', 'bar': 'apple', 'baz': 'lemon'];
    $b2 = ['foo' => 'orange', 'bar' => 'apple', 'baz' => 'lemon'];

    $a1 = array(1, 2, 3);
    $b1 = array('foo' => 'orange', 'bar' => 'apple', 'baz' => 'lemon');

It would be a nice change to have, but the syntax isn't -that- much better. A compromise might be:

    $b1 = array('foo': 'orange', 'bar': 'apple', 'baz': 'lemon');

But even then, you only save two characters per key:value.

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#8

Post by mikelbring » Tue, May 31, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

Rasmus voted for it!

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#9

Post by soulclap » Tue, May 31, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

TamDenholm wrote: post #2

I've been wanting this for a long time, seems like a no brainer to me. It'd be nice to add some of the nice syntactic sugar that other languages have. Kinda strange that they have both readable and unreadable listed as both pro and con...

Guess this just means what's readable to one person is not necessarily readable to another.

Re: PHP Short Syntax for Arrays: developers say no.

#10

Post by lux » Tue, May 31, 2011, 9:18 PM UTC

I've wanted this for soo long. It's little things like this that make PHP feel so much clunkier than other scripting languages...