[PHP-DEV] Inline conditional that returns null if falsy

[David Rodrigues]

Hello!

It is just a suggestion to be discussed.

A lot of places on my projects I have codes like:

$companies = $user->companies->count()
    ? new Collection($user->companies)
    : null;

So $companies will be null except if the user has companies.

My suggestion is create some kind of inline conditional to works like that:

$companies = $user->companies->count() => new Collection($user->companies);

If the conditional ($user->companies->count()) is true, then will return
the value (after =>), else will be null.

In my current work project, I have more than 100+ occurrences like that.

So some more examples:

$userCategory ? $userCategory->getTitle() : null
-> It could be optimized to the new nullsafe operator
$userCategory?->getTitle()

return $languageFirst instanceof LanguageExperience
? $languageFirst->title : null;
-> This not, with my suggestion we have:
return $languageFirst instanceof LanguageExperience =>
$languageFirst->title;

The => is just a suggestion, other options using existing keywords is:
return expr() then output();
return expr(): output();

I do not know if other languages support something like that.

Thanks!


Atenciosamente,
David Rodrigues