Hey Chris,
Chris Riley wrote:
Semantically, I don't believe that there is sufficient difference between
"returns no value" and "returns a value which has been defined as having no
value" for us to care about it. The main difference you get between return
type of null and a return type of void seems to be some extra fatal errors,
for a developer there seems little value.
From a user confusion point of view; PHP currently considers return; and
return null; to be equivalent (in fact some code style checkers will
replace one with the other) If (and only if) a function has a return type
of void these two statements are no longer equivalent - one is a fatal
error one is not. For any other return type specification, return null; and
return; would behave the same. This in itself would be enough for me to be
against adding a return type of void.
This is true, but `void` isn't an ordinary return type. It exists to
ensure a function doesn't return anything, unlike other return types
which exist to ensure a function returns a specific thing.
`return null;` is *technically* equivalent to `return;`, but it's not
quite the same in intent, usually. We could special-case it and allow
it, but why? The return value isn't supposed to be used, why should we
allow you to specify it? A void function in PHP does technically produce
a result of null, but it might as well be false or -1 or whatever for
all we care. Also, if `return null;` is to work, should `return(null);`
also work? How about `return \null;`? `return SOME_NULL_CONSTANT;`? It
seems silly to me since, again, the return value is insigificant.
Thanks.
--
Andrea Faulds
http://ajf.me/
--
PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
