Req #70378 [Opn]: keyval (=effective value as array key) to complement strval/intval

Edit report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=70378&edit=1

 ID:                 70378
 User updated by:    rn at alpha9marketing dot com
 Reported by:        rn at alpha9marketing dot com
 Summary:            keyval (=effective value as array key) to complement
                     strval/intval
 Status:             Open
 Type:               Feature/Change Request
 Package:            PHP Language Specification
 PHP Version:        Irrelevant
 Block user comment: N
 Private report:     N

 New Comment:

Also of note the float-as-string-as-key case, as opposed to the actual float-as-key:
php > $a = array("1.234" => 'kittycat');
php > var_dump($a);
array(1) {
  ["1.234"]=>
  string(8) "kittycat"
}

I.e. one would expect
php > var_dump(keyval("1.234"));
string(5) "1.234"


Previous Comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[2015-08-28 08:52:32] rn at alpha9marketing dot com

Description:
------------
PHP offers strval, intval, floatval, doubleval to manually coerce values to desired types. This eases strict comparisons with the === operator within a desired type domain.

One omission is that one can not trivially cast a value as it would be (internally) when that value is used as an array key.

PHP apparently casts booleans to integers when they are used as array keys. A subset of numeric strings (minus hex / octal literal strings, potentially others) is cast to integers, as are floats (truncated towards zero).

NULL is converted to an empty string.

There is currently no built-in function that exposes this special type coersion used for array keys to the programmer, though one would have to assume it exists somewhere in the PHP code and exposing it would require only an external interface without (much) additional logic.


Expected result:
----------------
php > var_dump(keyval(NULL));
string(0) ""
php > var_dump(keyval(false));
int(0)
php > var_dump(keyval(true));
int(1)
php > var_dump(keyval(-1.734));
int(-1)
php > var_dump(keyval(1.734));
int(1)
php > var_dump(keyval("12"));
int(12)
php > var_dump(keyval("0xA"));
string(3) "0xA"
php > var_dump(keyval("017"));
string(3) "017"




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Edit this bug report at https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=70378&edit=1