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

Hi

Am 2026-07-01 21:25, schrieb Seifeddine Gmati:
>> FWIW: I still have a rough draft to make `array()` (or rather: all
>> non-object types) proper functions that effectively would “stand in” 
>> as
>> cast operators. For `array()` specifically this would allow a
>> named-argument style of defining arrays with “unquoted keys”:
>> `array(foo: 1, bar: 2)`.
> 
> This would require deprecating `array()` first anyway, no? Otherwise,
> dealing with it during parsing would be hacky (looking ahead at
> `array(foo` for `:` or `=>` or `,` or `)` to decide if it's an array
> or a function call, possible, but hacky think ).

It's not particularly pretty, but possible. The `array()` syntax will 
not actually be a function call, it will just look like one. Basically 
the `:` syntax can just parse into the same AST as the `=>` syntax, the 
grammar just needs to make sure that they may not be mixed. The array() 
function will be made available in addition to support `\array` (i.e. 
with a fully-qualified name) and `array(...)` (i.e. a first class 
callable).

My rough draft is in https://github.com/php/php-src/pull/18613, I think 
there are some issues still with properly compiling the array, because 
the AST node for `=>` takes the two sides in different order compared to 
named arguments and I wanted to document the AST structure first (and 
then got distracted by more important things).

Best regards
Tim Düsterhus