Comments on: PHP Insanity

By: The Maybe Operator | Programmer’s Paradox

The Maybe Operator | Programmer’s Paradox — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 03:37:26 +0000

[...] discussion stems from several events coming together in my brain at once. First was my previous PHP Insanity post, part I. In it I talked about PHP’s comparison operators and how I find them lacking. This lead [...]

By: chuck

chuck — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 21:16:58 +0000

I, too, had not considered the usefulness of this weird-notion-of-equality that PHP has for GET/POST variables. It’s a good point, but since the majority of my PHP work doesn’t deal in GET/POST variables (AMFPHP remoting services for Flash/Flex applications), I haven’t needed this “kind” of equality. I guess that’s what happens when you try to make a “hypertext preprocessor” into a real programming language.

It still remains that programmers on the whole are accustomed to == being an equality operator, that it means, “equal,” not “kinda equal” or “equal in a POST-variable sense”. Hence this is still a bad design — “equal in a POST variable sense” ought to have used some other operator. “===” feels like it means “more equal” rather than “sorta equal” though, so I’d suggest ?=

By: PHP Insanity II | Programmer’s Paradox

PHP Insanity II | Programmer’s Paradox — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 01:42:13 +0000

[...] 0. In fact, anything other than an integer will return 0 (with the exception of a few strings – see part I of this series). But wait, I know what you’re thinking: 0 is in fact, an [...]

By: Mark

Mark — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:11:28 +0000

Interesting. I hadn’t considered the usefulness in the case of a post variable, where this does make sense. I guess this is a case of knowing the language and knowing what it was designed for. Although it can still be maddening encountering this behavior unexpectedly for the first time. Thanks for that insight.

By: acebone

acebone — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 20:29:28 +0000

typecomparison was a typo – it should’ve read typeconversion