Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC] Duration class

Hi

On 2026-07-01 20:18, Larry Garfield wrote:
>> We will thus keep instance methods for “addition” and “subtraction”. 
>> If
>> someone has a suggestion regarding naming (particularly with regard to
>> negate() vs negated() and multiplyBy() and multipliedBy()), I'll be
>> happy to discuss that. Java uses plus, minus, multipliedBy, dividedBy
>> and negated. Golang is just using an integer (meaning you just use the
>> operators). Rust’s std::time::Duration uses add, sub, mul, div (with
>> saturating and checked variants), but also overloads operators. Rust’s
>> chrono::TimeDelta is similar to std::time::Duration, but doesn't have
>> the saturating variants. JavaScript’s Temporal uses add, sub, negated
>> and doesn't support multiplication and division.
>> 
>> Please keep the `divide**By**()` (Duration / int -> Duration) vs
>> `divide**Into**()` (Duration / Duration -> (int, Duration)) suggestion
>> in mind when having opinions about the naming. See:
>> https://news-web.php.net/php.internals/131634
> 
> negated() would be consistent with the "ed means return new" pattern 
> found in many languages, so I would strongly recommend following that 
> pattern.

Yes. The only issue I'm having with that is that it doesn't trivially 
transfer to addition and subtraction, which technically would be an 
inconsistency in the API. Maybe that's okay, particularly given that 
both Java and JavaScript have the -ed for everything exception addition 
and subtraction, but I nevertheless want to have the discussion.

> For the others, my inclination is to go short (add, sub) for easier 
> typing and a more compact result, but that's not a make-or-break issue 
> for me.

Having slept over it, I would prefer the full `subtract()`:

Our naming policy mentions to that “Abbreviations and acronyms as well 
as initialisms SHOULD be avoided wherever possible” 
(https://github.com/php/policies/blob/main/coding-standards-and-naming.rst#acronyms).

------------

To further complicate matters, the relatively new BcMath\Number class 
goes with add, sub, mul, div. Given that we need two division operations 
here, we’ll need the suffix and `divBy` and `divInto` don‘t really roll 
off the tongue well, particularly the latter :-|

Best regards
Tim Düsterhus