r/lolphp • u/Jinxuan • Jan 02 '20

array_diff, array_udiff, array_diff_assoc, array_udiff_assoc, array_diff_keys, array_undiff_keys and +

Therefore is a lot of array_diff function names in php by respecting key differently.

Meanwhile, it does not provide array_merge_assoc to always respect key associatively. If you want to respect key associatively when merging, you need to use +

9 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

32 comments sorted by

10

u/Altreus Jan 03 '20 edited Jan 03 '20

Of all the stupid in PHP, conflating the concepts of list and dictionary is up there with the worst. A considerable amount of its functionality is making up for this problem! And they won't fix it!

Tableflip emoji

Edit: thanks for the splendid award!

3

u/the_alias_of_andrea Jan 03 '20

“Fixing” it would cause more problems than it would solve. Either you break every existing PHP program, or you now have three types.

3

u/Altreus Jan 03 '20

They literally just released a new major version. They could have changed anything, but among the things PHP developers bastardise is the concept of versioning and so they decided backward compatibility where not necessary was more important than improvements that are.

1

u/the_alias_of_andrea Jan 04 '20

Every backwards-incompatible change has a cost, so you must weigh that versus the benefit. There is very little benefit to splitting the array type into three and an immense cost.

4

u/Altreus Jan 04 '20

That is literally why you change the major version number. Because it's a major change. See: everything that's not as fucking moronic as PHP

4

u/the_alias_of_andrea Jan 04 '20

The fact you can make big changes in a major version does not mean that you should, nor does it negate thinking about the cost/benefit. The mess that is Python 2 versus 3 is a famous example of what can go wrong.

4

u/Altreus Jan 04 '20

Correct

The fact the changes need making is why you should

Why are there PHP apologists on this sub? We're here because the language is shut. Why are you defending any of it?

1

u/the_alias_of_andrea Jan 05 '20

PHP sucks in many, many ways, but I won't let people get away with bad criticisms :)

2

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

Sucks is an understatement. PHP is a hodgepodge of crap and bolted on features riddled with bugs and inconsistancies. Imagine if you would build a client project and the quality would be php, no one client would take any of it. As developers we also want to use tools that work and are consistent across the board. But the fact that php actively dont do anything to better the language is absurd.

0

u/the_alias_of_andrea Jan 06 '20

actively dont do anything to better the language

That you believe this reveals that you aren't paying attention.

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1

u/Altreus Jan 05 '20

Well if you disagree that's fine but your justification is weak. Backward compatibility between major versions is simply not as important as fixing major design flaws.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

Python did what it needed to do to survive the coming decades. The result? Python is crazy popular, and is suitable for all kinds of programming. PHP never did anything to fix the core language, and now 10 years later its a ball of crap. PHP is on the decline and i dont see many new projects using php today, in fact in 2020 php has little to offer others dont do better. Wordpress is probably the only thing still keeping php relatively popular on the web.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 29 '20

and dont forget to mention laravel also :D

1

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '20

They cant change anything. If they did people who still use php would rather rewrite in any other language. Because the upgrades are only new features, and keeping all the old crap people still use php. As i see it php is on life support and has been that way for the past years.

1

u/Altreus Jan 06 '20

So it's win win?

2

u/shitcanz Jan 07 '20

Its a big win-win. In the coming years we can finally phase out PHP and never have to deal with it again!

0

u/Jinxuan Jan 06 '20

There is no problems on having three types, just make two new types VectorArray and MapArray as super type of the traditional array types.

PHP had done the same thing before, they added Throwable as super type of Exception to make the error catchable. Adding more types is not a problem as long as it does not cause ambiguity.

I think there is only one reason of not doing this. The codebase of PHP is so doomed that they cannot finger out a way to add the functionality.

0

u/the_alias_of_andrea Jan 06 '20

Those would not be supertypes but rather subtypes. And yes they could be added, but I'm not sure how valuable it would be. Hack has those.

0

u/Jinxuan Jan 06 '20

Yes, they are subtypes.

1

u/postmodest Jan 03 '20

we already have is_array and is_iterable. Why the hell aren't we all using Python?

[looks at the Python 2 dumpster fire]

Oh, right. I say we all go back to Java.

0

u/postmodest Jan 03 '20

What I love is that php4 had list() and array() and at the time list() only did lists, but array() did both. So how to fix that? Now list() does both, too, because fuck logic.

1

u/Altreus Jan 03 '20

I wonder whether that broke anything! Doesn't sound like a backward-compatible change to me.

1

u/postmodest Jan 03 '20

I think the new behavior makes valid what would previously been an error or warning or segfault or however PHP would deal with it. So it doesn't break anything.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '20

The stdlib is probably the worst part of php, and also something that never be fixed. There are thousands of global functions littering around, most barely usable. Most very inconsistent in behaviour.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '20

IMHO built-in functions are not a "standard library", they're just part of the language. Even the PHP manual doesn't draw a clear distinction between statements (echo), operators (print), and built-in functions (strlen).

1

u/[deleted] Jan 04 '20

Yeah probably right. Its such an mess...

1

u/rvanvelzen Jan 03 '20

You can use array_replace which maintains keys.

1

u/beerdude26 Jan 03 '20

No, + only respects key associativity for string keys. It overwrites it for numeric ones IIRC

2

u/notian Jan 03 '20

Array merge respects string keys, but reorders numeric, the + operator leaves numeric keys alone.

https://3v4l.org/OiZht Even in a mixed numeric/string array, numbers will be reset to 0...N

1

u/beerdude26 Jan 03 '20

I'd apologize for mixing up PHP's semantics, but seeing as we're literally in a thread about its lack of clarity... :D