PHP RFC: Remove alternative PHP tags
- Date: 2014-09-09
- Author: Nikita Popov nikic@php.net
- Status: Accepted
- Targeting: PHP 7
Proposal
This RFC proposes the removal of ASP tags (<%) and script tags (<script language=php>) as a means of entering or leaving PHP mode.
The following syntactical elements are removed:
<%opening tag<%=opening tag with echo%>closing tag(<script\s+language\s*=\s*(php|"php"|'php')\s*>)iopening tag(</script>)iclosing tag
The listed opening tags will no longer enter PHP mode and the listed closing tags will no longer leave PHP mode.
Additionally the asp_tags ini directive is removed. Trying to enable asp_tags will result in a core error.
This RFC does not remove short opening tags (<?) or short opening tags with echo (<?=).
Reasoning
- The alternative PHP tags have never gained any significant degree of usage. Their usage has been discouraged since forever.
- The ASP tags depend on an ini directive and as such are non-portable. We generally try to move away from ini-dependent language behavior. With ASP tags removed, short open tags should be the last.
- ASP tags clash with underscore.js templates and it's not possible to disable asp tags using
ini_set(). - Supporting different tags allows very weird mixing like
<script language=php> echo "foo" %>
Porting tool
To simplify porting of legacy code using the alternative tags, a porting script is provided. The script takes a directory and will replace ASP and script tags in all .php files contained in this directory:
php -d asp_tags=1 portAlternativeTags.php dir/
Vote
The vote started on 2014-09-24 and ended on 2014-10-01. The required 2/3 majority has been reached, as such this RFC is accepted.