On Thu, Feb 20, 2025, at 16:54, Volker Dusch wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 9:57 PM Rob Landers <[email protected]> wrote:
> Hey Rob,
>
> Sorry for writing the mail again, I just noticed I forgot to include the list on my first reply
> to you, also corrected a mistake in the second paragraph.
>
> > There will eventually be a php 9, where BC changes will be possible.
>
> I don't assume PHP will change the behavior of widely used core functions to throw
> exceptions in PHP 9 as the BC impact will be colossal, hurting adoption. Or am I misunderstanding
> you here?
>
> The point that there might be arguments over usage in internal code is why we went with an
> "only if it is a clear problem, especially when the function has important side effects"
> policy to avoid this. There are not a too many examples in core, more in userland.
I was merely pointing out that if you were to want to make BC breaks, you can. You just won’t get
it :soon:
>
> > I have to stop you here. It is absolutely NOT safe and reasonable to ignore the output of
> > array_pop. You popped it for a reason. If you just care about removing the last element, then you
> > should use unset. Unset gives the intention. If I review code with array_pop, I’ll spend quite a
> > bit of time checking that it was intentionally ignoring the return value (and leave a comment of the
> > same, asking to use unset instead).
>
> There are plenty of codebases where array_pop is used for this reason. Identifying the last
> element of a php array. unset($foo[array_key_last($foo)]); is only possible since 7.3
> and not widely used. array_pop is also shorter and faster for the same effect (when used on unknown
> array shapes ofc). The examples are plenty https://github.com/search?q=repo%3AWordPress%2FWordPress%20array_pop&type=code
>
> Regards,
> Volker
This feels like a rationalization, and not a reason. It has a return value, and there are more
expressive ways to remove a value from an array that makes the intention clearer. If you aren’t
using the return value, you should make it clear that is the intention. That’s why I said it
should be included in this, for exactly the rationale you gave. It IS faster, but it clearly has a
side effect that should be used or intentionally discarded.
— Rob