The base_convert family of functions(base_convert, binhex, hexbin etc) are very accepting with their input arguments, you can pass any string to to them and they give a best effort of converting it.
For example base_convert(“hello world”, 16, 10); will return 237 with no warnings. What this does internally is base_convert(“ed”, 16, 10);
Also negative numbers simply do not work, eg base_convert(“-ff”, 16, 10); will return 255. (similar to above the “-” gets silently ignored).
Experienced developers get caught out by this for example https://gist.github.com/iansltx/4820b02ab276c3306314daaa41573445#file-getlines-php-L9
In this case literal binary data was the input and the result was 0 (which is expected but not clear)
Other functions affected by this are:
Other programming languages behave in a a similar way to this proposal * Javascript - https://jsfiddle.net/c16b4usp/ * Python - https://repl.it/repls/OliveBlushingModem * Go - https://play.golang.org/p/aLWg15c00Fy
Javascript does work with larger numbers correctly, Python and Go work in a way which would be similar to PHP if this change was made.
I propose two changes to the base_convert family of functions.
When passed arguments that base_convert will ignore, also give a warning to the user informing them their input was incorrect. There is an exception in place for the second char, if base is 16 'x' is allowed eg “0xff”, base 2 allows b and base 8 allows o. this fits in with common formats for these numbers
This can be raised to a full exception for a later PHP version (eg PHP 8)
Negative numbers should be allowed to be passed to the base_convert family of functions. for example base_convert('-ff', 16', 10); should return -255. Currently users need to make an exception in this case
No BC breaks for a warning, in the case of an exception there will be a BC break - Would suggest PHP 8 for this.
base_convert currently in the backend has a zend_ulong as its representation. We would need a zend_long. This will change the behavior of numbers in the range 9223372036854775807 - 18446744073709551615 but will allow negative numbers.
This currently breaks a fair amount of unit tests that I will need to update if this change is accepted. The unit tests are around extreme values.
A secondary BC change would be people who have worked around this in userland code for example
https://stackoverflow.com/a/7051224/1281385
This change will break these work arounds
Would suggest PHP8 for this change
PHP 7.4 for warnings PHP 8.0 for negative arguments and exceptions
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Make sure there are no open issues when the vote starts!
Only the base_convert family of functions will be changed
Allow base_convert to allow any length input and not be restricted to a 64 bit int type
2 votes
This vote will be to raise a E_DEPRECATED warning for PHP 7.4. Raising to be an InvalidArgumentException in PHP 8
This vote will allow negative arguments in PHP 8
Started 19th June 2019. Ends 3rd July 2019
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