+ 1 for the RFC
But if i'm not completely wrong, there is performance decrease instead of
increase in your tests?
https://gist.github.com/krakjoe/8444591
[joe@fiji php-src]$ sapi/cli/php isTest.php 10000
objects: 10000
arrayof: 0.00645113
instanceof: 0.00560713
I gave the RFC a few more thoughts and came to the conclusion that it
does not fit to PHP (due to the performance penalties involved).
The syntax merely hide an ugly design. If you would write the same in
normal PHP then probably everyone would agree that it is bad design.
How is type checking a bad design?
Between:
function (array $foos) {
Following an example (doesn't really make sense but outlines the bad
design)
function foo(Foo[] $foos){
if(count($foos) > 0){
$a = array_pop($foos);
//do something
foo($foos);
}
}
Is equivalent to
function foo(array $arr){
foreach($arr as $v){
if(!($v instanceof Foo)){
//trigger_error
}
}
if(count($foos) > 0){
$a = array_pop($foos);
//do something
foo($foos);
}
}
The check adds runtime complexity to the function for each call which is
obviously not necessary (once would be good enough). And I doubt that
users would actually make sure that the check is only performed once and
even if you would argue that one should write it as follows:
function bar(Foo[] $foos){
foo($foos);
}
function foo(array $foos){
if(count($foos) > 0){
$a = array_pop($foos);
//do something
foo($foos);
}
}
Then it is still bad design compared to a collection which actually does
the check during the addition of elements.
Although, I like the effort to make PHP somewhat more type safe I am -1
for this RFC, the implementation respectively. If we want typed arrays
then the array needs to carry the type to be efficient.