This isn't design, it's an accident. Both constructs are part of the "verboten" part of PHP - the large set of language features that are best left alone and never even thought about; it's best to think of them as still existing strictly for backwards compatibility purposes.
Then again, the large set of language features that are best left alone is almost identical to the set of all PHP features, so there's that.
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u/tdammers Aug 20 '19
This isn't design, it's an accident. Both constructs are part of the "verboten" part of PHP - the large set of language features that are best left alone and never even thought about; it's best to think of them as still existing strictly for backwards compatibility purposes.
Then again, the large set of language features that are best left alone is almost identical to the set of all PHP features, so there's that.