Posted by Jochem Maas on 07/29/05 11:14

Marcus Bointon wrote:
> On 29 Jul 2005, at 08:19, Jochem Maas wrote:
>
>> unless String is a class you defined that won't work at all. basic
>> data types
>> cannot be hinted (e.g. bool, int, string, float)
>
>
> There's been quite a bit about this on php-internals. It seems to be
> because PHP doesn't differentiate between these types internally; they

so called zvals (zend value) and indeed typehinting these in php would
be silly.

> all seem to be classified as a generic scalar type whose actual type is
> determined according to context. Java can go to the other extreme,
> where every simple type is an object, and hence it's easy (if not
> mandatory) to specify types like this. You would never be able to say
> 'print "2" + 2' in Java and expect to get "4". This looseness is very
> much part of what makes PHP so easy to get into - if you really want
> these kind of features, you can just use Java instead!

not unless you put a gun to my head ;-)

>
> Another point is that exception handling (another PHP5 feature) is next
> to useless without type hinting, so they HAD to implement it for

that never crossed my mind!

> objects so that catch clauses could work properly.
>
> Marcus

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