xref: /PHP-5.4/Zend/RFCs/003.txt (revision f7b10aba)
1Title:           Loose type requirements for functions
2Version:         $Id: 30fb4cec4912f30d0600d45fda082d7eadf58521 $
3Status:          draft
4Maintainer:      Brian Moon <brianm@dealnews.com>
5Created:         2001-09-17
6Modified:        2001-09-17
7
8
91. Background/Need
10==================
11
12Many internal function of PHP will reject parameters because of their
13type (the array and variable function come to mind).  For userland
14this is not an easy task as there is no uniform way to do it.  An
15addition to the engine for requiring loose types would allow
16delevopers to know that the data passed to their functions is of the
17correct type and reduce the need for duplicating the same code in
18every function to check for the type of data.
19
20
212. Overview
22===========
23
24Loose typing mostly means evaluating the contents of the variable and
25not the type of the variable itself.  The requirements for this would
26and should work much like several of the is_* functions do now.
27
28The typing of parameters would be optional and those not typed would
29simply continue to be treated as they are now.
30
313. Functionality
32================
33
343.1. Allowed Types
35==================
36
37Only loose types should be needed to ensure the data is usable by the
38function.  Duplicating the functionallity of is_scalar, is_resource,
39is_array and is_object should give developers all the information they
40need to use a variable correctly.
41
423.2. Syntax
43===========
44
45The current function syntax should be expanded to allow typing of
46variables inline in a C style.
47
48function foo ($var){
49}
50
51could be changed to require an array such as:
52
53function foo (array $var){
54}
55
563.3. Errors
57===========
58
59Mis-matches in type should be reported as fatal errors and should halt
60the execution of a script as that function can not be run and code
61following could not reliably run.
62
63
644. Compatibility Notes
65======================
66
67Old code that does not take advantage of this will run without
68modifications.
69
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