On 25 June 2024 21:24:32 BST, Rob Landers <rob@bottled.codes> wrote:
>The only way you’d observe this (that I can think of) is by performing a
>for-each loop over the array.
There are many ways you can observe the difference between an absent key and a
null value; here are just a handful off the top of my head:
- array_key_exists() (that's literally its purpose!)
- array_keys()
- count() (if the array held "an infinite number of nulls", we should return
infinity for every array!)
- json_encode()
- print_r(), var_dump(), var_export()
- extract()
It may be questionable to give meaning to the difference in some of these
cases, but different it definitely is.
> If we don't like it, we can always create an RFC to treat non-existent keys
> as an error instead of a warning.
I believe that is the explicit intention or desire of those who raised it from
Notice to Warning. It would certainly prevent some bugs where a typo leads to
the wrong key being accessed.
Personally, I'd like to see a few use cases catered for first, like
$counters[$key]++ and $groups[$key][] = $value; Perhaps by introducing some
equivalent of Python's "defaultdict". Because I do agree that the current
behaviour is useful sometimes (even if I disagree in how to describe it).
Regards,
Rowan Tommins
[IMSoP]
