On 14 Oct 2014, at 19:53, Lester Caine <[email protected]> wrote:
> The real life situation is that databases have used a 64bit integer as
> the primary key for records in a table for a long time now. Loading
> these records into arrays using the primary key as the array key is a
> natural process but as you have identified currently once they go over a
> 32 bit value they switch from simple integer to strings. Upgrading PHP
> to natively support 64bit integers on 64bit platforms but leaving them
> as 32bit on 32bit platforms is creating an inconsistency which this rfc
> seems to be making more complex rather than less. This why I was simply
> looking for a 64bit integer type that works as a simple integer on 32bit
> platforms as well. GMP is overkill for this simple case and only needed
> when one actually needs integers bigger than 64bit, and normal
> programming does not need that in PHP7, just a clean 64bit integer.
> Currently we can do any necessary 64bit maths on the keys in the
> database, but for cross database working a consistent solution inside
> PHP would help.
Well, you also get 64-bit support for free with GMP. Maybe it’s “overkill”, but it does solve
your use case.
If you really want to go and add 64-bit emulation to 32-bit builds, be my guest. But nobody’s gone
and done that.
--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/