Type safety in PHP

Hi,

I am currently working on my final project of my undergraduate study and the project is about type safety in PHP. One aspect of the project examines the opinion of the PHP community on this topic.

I now need your help. I would be very glad, if you could take 5 – 20 minutes to fill in my online survey: http://www.q-set.co.uk/q-set.php?sCode=PGSKQCJUWZVK

I will publish the deliverables of my project under an open source license. Thus you contribute automatically to an open source project if you fill in the form

Thanks for your help
Robert Stoll

Your survey consists mostly of loaded questions. Of course PHP should be improved! Where's the question about whether I consider PHP to be lacking in this area?


The "improvement" is vague, not to mention an incorrect sample of PHP code. Must the variable be of a string type? Is it cast to string if not?


This doesn't address type safety. It's a question of defining variables on-the-fly. Related, sure, but a different topic.


It certainly would change PHP: you're redefining the syntax for the language. If I were to write for your tool I would not be writing PHP anymore - I would be writing "TSPHP".


Wait... So if the project is unfeasible then do I enter "infinity"?


Enums, generics, operator overloading, properties, object initializers, list-style object initializers, catching multiple exceptions at once... These are all features in other languages. I'll say it again because it seems you've lost track: this is not PHP anymore. C# is cool and all and I really do love it (screw Java), but I also love PHP because it's not C#.


What does this have to do with strong typing? I get that later questions are about establishing a background for the interviewee but IDE?


Who am I asking? "The community"? Which one? Made up of what type of people?

Also, have you seen the Type-checking RFC?
Also, that site is reeeaaallly slow.

First of all, thanks for your answer.


Well, I am sure not everyone will have the same opinion as you have. I read many times statements such as, "no, to complicated", "PHP was always a weak typed system and every attempt to improve it is evil" etc.


These question should come once



As mentioned the improvements are not yet applicable in PHP. It's an example how scalar types could be defined for parameters in a later PHP version (or in TSPHP).


I mostly agree, I am just curious what people think about this related topic.


Cannot agree on this one, PHP would remain as it is today, but yes, the developer would need to write TSPHP instead of PHP with this approach. Do you agree that we could say, if one want type safety he should use TSPHP if one doesn't care the should stick to PHP?


Hm... maybe I have asked my question wrong or it's not clear enough. I wanted to say enter your desired time regardless if it is feasible to develop TSPHP in this time.


You are right, that's not PHP at all and I wanted to know if you miss one of those concepts in PHP.


Indirectly it has something to do with type safety. You said you are familiar with C#. I am sure you aware of the support of the language within the IDE.


I know, it's a realy hypothetical question.


Yes I have seen all RFC relating to type safety, but thank you.


Yes unfortunately. you cannot image how long it takes to set up an online survey and you wouldn't change to another platform either. Futhermore q-set is free and has many good features (as rules, jumping etc) which other services do not provide.