PHP RFC drafts and ideas

This is a repo where I keep ideas and RFC drafts for changes to PHP.

Discussions are not accepted on this repo and must be held on the PHP internals list. The only PRs that will be accepted are typo and wording improvements, or when I have explicitly requested suggestions.

Note: if an RFC is published it will follow the license of the PHP Wiki.

Script to convert markdown to custom DokuWiki syntax

Use the md-to-dokuwiki.php script to generate DokuWiki text that mostly works without edits from a markdown file.

Future possible RFC ideas

RFCs Actively being worked on

• Container/offset semantics overhaul

Priority ideas

These are in no particular order, but they are RFCs that I want to work on sooner than later

• Comparison semantics overhaul
• PDOException, fix code property being a string
• Warn on implicit conversions from resource to string
• Remove assumption about multiplication * being commutative
• Remove usage of SPL extensions in other internal extensions
• Warn when int to float loses precision + introduce SAFE_INTEGER constant like JS
• Change eval() to a function that can be disabled
• Make void an alias for null to fix type system
• Object serialization overhaul
• Warn when attempting to destructure scalars

Remainder of ideas

• Meta RFC transform empty into a function
• Remove old DBA handlers
• Deprecate bool to string implicit coercions
• Deprecate InfiniteIterator
• Deprecate implicit conversions to bool in function type juggling context
• Deprecate control-flow structures in finally blocks
• Stop requiring parameter names in PHP interface methods
• Function types
• Have array sort functions return the sorted array instead of always true
• Deprecate support for using objects as arrays foreach, HASH_OF, Z_PARAM_ARRAY_OR_OBJECT(), Z_PARAM_ARRAY_OR_OBJECT_HT(), etc.

Suggested RFC ideas by other people

These are RFCs ideas that have been suggested during discussion offline or on the list

• Split exit() and die() into distinct functions where die() only take strings and exit() only takes integers.

Accepted RFC

• Change exit() to function