PHP Internals News: Episode 71: What didn’t make it into PHP 8.0? PHP Internals News
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PHP Internals News: Episode 71: What didn’t make it into PHP 8.0?
London, UK
Thursday, November 19th 2020, 09:34 GMT
In this episode of "PHP Internals News" we're looking back at all the RFCs that we discussed on this podcast for PHP 7.4, but did not end up making the cut. In their own words, the RFC authors explain what these features are, with your host interjecting his own comments on the state of affairs.
The RSS feed for this podcast is https://derickrethans.nl/feed-phpinternalsnews.xml, you can download this episode's MP3 file, and it's available on Spotify and iTunes. There is a dedicated website: https://phpinternals.news
Transcript
Derick Rethans 0:15
Hi, I'm Derick, and this is PHP internals news, a weekly podcast dedicated to demystifying the development of the PHP language. This is Episode 71. At the end of last year, I collected snippets from episodes about all the features that did not make it into PHP seven dot four, and I'm doing the same this time around. So welcome to this year's 'Which things were proposed to be included into PHP 8.0, but didn't make it. In Episode 41, I spoke with Stephen Wade about his two array RFC, a feature you wanted to add to PHP to scratch an itch. In his own words:
Steven Wade 0:52
This is a feature that I've, I've kind of wish I would have been in the language for years, and talking with a few people who encouraged. It's kind of like the rule of starting a user group right, if there's not one and you have the desire, then you're the person to do it. A few people encouraged to say well why don't you go out and write it? So I've spent the last two years kind of trying to work up the courage or research it enough or make sure I write the RFC the proper way. And then also actually have the time to commit to writing it, and following up with any of the discussions as well.
Steven Wade 1:20
I want to introduce a new magic method the as he said the name of the RFC is the double underscore to array. And so the idea is that you can cast an object, if your class implements this method, just like it would toString; if you cast it manually, to array then that method will be called if it's implemented, or as, as I said in the RFC, array functions will can can automatically cast that if you're not using strict types.
Derick Rethans 1:44
I questioned him on potential negative feedback about the RFC, because it suggested to add a new metric method. He answered:
Steven Wade 1:53
Beauty of PHP is in its simplicity. And so, adding more and more interfaces, kind of expands class declarations enforcement's, and in my opinion can lead to a lot of clutter. So I think PHP is already very magical, and the precedent has been set to add more magic to it with seven four with the introduction of serialize and unserialize magic methods. And so for me it's just kind of a, it's a tool. I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing or a good thing it's just another option for the developer to use
Derick Rethans 2:21
The RFC was not voted on and a feature henceforth did not make it into PHP eight zero.
Derick Rethans 2:27
Operator overloading is a topic that has come up several times over the last 20 years that PHP has been around as even an extension that implements is in the PECL repository. Jan Bøhmer proposed to include user space based operator overloading for PHP eight dot zero. I asked him about a specific use cases:
Jan Böhmer 2:46
Higher mathematical objects like complex numbers vectors, something like tensors, maybe something like the string component of
PHP Internals News: Episode 71: What didn’t make it into PHP 8.0?
London, UK
Thursday, November 19th 2020, 09:34 GMT
In this episode of "PHP Internals News" we're looking back at all the RFCs that we discussed on this podcast for PHP 7.4, but did not end up making the cut. In their own words, the RFC authors explain what these features are, with your host interjecting his own comments on the state of affairs.
The RSS feed for this podcast is https://derickrethans.nl/feed-phpinternalsnews.xml, you can download this episode's MP3 file, and it's available on Spotify and iTunes. There is a dedicated website: https://phpinternals.news
Transcript
Derick Rethans 0:15
Hi, I'm Derick, and this is PHP internals news, a weekly podcast dedicated to demystifying the development of the PHP language. This is Episode 71. At the end of last year, I collected snippets from episodes about all the features that did not make it into PHP seven dot four, and I'm doing the same this time around. So welcome to this year's 'Which things were proposed to be included into PHP 8.0, but didn't make it. In Episode 41, I spoke with Stephen Wade about his two array RFC, a feature you wanted to add to PHP to scratch an itch. In his own words:
Steven Wade 0:52
This is a feature that I've, I've kind of wish I would have been in the language for years, and talking with a few people who encouraged. It's kind of like the rule of starting a user group right, if there's not one and you have the desire, then you're the person to do it. A few people encouraged to say well why don't you go out and write it? So I've spent the last two years kind of trying to work up the courage or research it enough or make sure I write the RFC the proper way. And then also actually have the time to commit to writing it, and following up with any of the discussions as well.
Steven Wade 1:20
I want to introduce a new magic method the as he said the name of the RFC is the double underscore to array. And so the idea is that you can cast an object, if your class implements this method, just like it would toString; if you cast it manually, to array then that method will be called if it's implemented, or as, as I said in the RFC, array functions will can can automatically cast that if you're not using strict types.
Derick Rethans 1:44
I questioned him on potential negative feedback about the RFC, because it suggested to add a new metric method. He answered:
Steven Wade 1:53
Beauty of PHP is in its simplicity. And so, adding more and more interfaces, kind of expands class declarations enforcement's, and in my opinion can lead to a lot of clutter. So I think PHP is already very magical, and the precedent has been set to add more magic to it with seven four with the introduction of serialize and unserialize magic methods. And so for me it's just kind of a, it's a tool. I don't think that it's necessarily a bad thing or a good thing it's just another option for the developer to use
Derick Rethans 2:21
The RFC was not voted on and a feature henceforth did not make it into PHP eight zero.
Derick Rethans 2:27
Operator overloading is a topic that has come up several times over the last 20 years that PHP has been around as even an extension that implements is in the PECL repository. Jan Bøhmer proposed to include user space based operator overloading for PHP eight dot zero. I asked him about a specific use cases:
Jan Böhmer 2:46
Higher mathematical objects like complex numbers vectors, something like tensors, maybe something like the string component of