Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Deprecations for PHP 8.6

> Sorry to butt in, but a) the minimum PHP for WP is PHP 7.4

I got the 8.3 number from their official website:
https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/ , even if the requirement is
7.1, the `[]` syntax works fine there. So, this is not a problem.

> * Code accessibility - it is much quicker to determine whether something is a list or an array when visually scanning code when the keywords are being used.

`list(` does not mean a "list", PHP has no such type right now. It
means you are destructuring an array, `list("foo" => $bar)` is valid.
so "quicker to determine" is false, you can swap every `list(` usage
with `array(` and the behavior will be exactly the same.

> * Searchability of the code base - searching for `array(` or `list(` will yield useful results, searching for `[` will yield a hundred times more results, most of which are not what one is looking for (array access, assignments etc).

Yes, it would also yield `$typed->array(`, `$posts->list(`, and more.
If you are looking for a specific syntax, you should use AST based
search tools, not grep text. In which case, you can easily grep for
array construction using `[]` over writes/reads using array-access
syntax. This has never been a problem in every other language that
uses `[]` syntax.

> Other than that, they've brought up practical reasons for not switching to the new syntax in the past. Think along the lines of there being thousands of (often long-standing) open patches, which would need to be updated before they can be merged. The extra burden this would put on the limited amount of committers is another reason.

Again, i don't think the language should be held down because of a
single project when the migration path is available, and works for all
supported versions of that project, whether it's WordPress or any
other.

Cheers,
Seifeddine.