Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Primary Constructors

On Mon, 29 Jun 2026 at 01:18, Rob Landers <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello internals,
>
> I'd like to put forward Primary Constructors for comment.
>
> An implementation PR will be opened later today (UTC), and the RFC updated with this discussion thread.
>
> — Rob

Hi Rob,

Personally, I really dislike this feature.

It adds a new syntax that increases the complexity of the PHP grammar,
which is already quite complex, for no real advantage. It's just a
slightly different way to write something the language already
expresses.

It's also confusing to read. A line like:

```
class Foo(public int $a, public string $b) extends Base($a, $b) { ... }
```

jumps from class definition, to constructor definition, to class
definition again (inheritance), to what is effectively a
`parent::__construct()` call, and then back into the class body.
That's a lot of distinct concepts packed into a single line, with no
syntactic separation to signal the shift from one to the next.

Cheers,
Seifeddine.