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PHP RFC: Short ternary Assignment Operator
- Version: 0.1.0
- Date: 2016-03-10
- Author: Sara Golemon pollita@php.net (Heavily cribbed from Midori Kocak mtkocak@gmail.com)
- Status: Voting
- First Published at: http://wiki.php.net/rfc/short_ternary_equal_operator
Introduction
Most binary expressions in PHP (e.g. `$x = $y op $z;`) have a shorthand form for self assignment (where the lefthand of the binary op is the same as the lefthand of the assignment), in this example: `$x = $x op $y;` is the same as `$x op= $y;`. While it's true for most binary operations, it is not true for the null coalesce operator (the subject of http://wiki.php.net/rfc/null_coalesce_equal_operator ) or the short ternary operator: `?:`.
Proposal
Add an assignment operatory for short ternary expressions such that the following two lines of code are equivalent:
$x = $x ?: $y; $x ?:= $y;
Thus, the value of right-hand parameter is assigned by value to the left-hand variable if the left-hand variable is currently falsy.
Proposed PHP Version(s)
This proposed for the next PHP 7.x.
Vote
As this is a language change, a 2/3 majority is required. A straight Yes/No vote is being held.
Vote was closed a few hours after opening (at 9:3 in favor) due to issues with the proposed implementation. It will be reopened at a later time (with a fresh vote).
References
This is essentially the same proposal as https://wiki.php.net/rfc/null_coalesce_equal_operator with a focus on the short ternary operator, rather than the null coalesce operator.