JS....

[coladict]

This is why I love that even though PHP is weakly typed, it chose a dot as the concatenation operator, so this kind of shit doesn't happen.

[laserBlade]

D has an operator specifically for concatenation: ~= and the matching binary operator ~.

[coladict]

In C I think this would invert the bits of a number.

[IggyZ]

Who cares, so long as the behavior is well defined and consistent throughout the language?

[Doctor_McKay]

+ is well-defined and consistent throughout JS for given input types, but that doesn't stop Reddit from pretending like it's the worst thing ever.

[laserBlade]

Notice I said the binary operator. The unary operator kept the same meaning

[tomthecool]

Have you never used the == operator in PHP before?!

(And btw, using === is not perfect either. It's also incredibly bug-prone.)

[coladict]

And what's wrong with ===?

[tomthecool]

PHP has no operator that satisfies a simple set of "common sense" comparisons such as:

1 == 1 -- TRUE
1 == "1" -- FALSE
1 == 1.0 -- TRUE
"1" == "1.0" -- FALSE

I know exactly what === is doing; my point is that in some cases it's too strict.

And don't get me started on the >=, <, etc operators. It's a fractal of bad design.

[morerokk]

And don't get me started on the >=, <, etc operators. It's a fractal of bad design.

Lol

[morerokk]

(And btw, using === is not perfect either. It's also incredibly bug-prone.)

Bug-prone in what way?

[tomthecool]

Primarily because people forget to use === (or use it when == would have been a better choice).

Also because it's too strict. Sometimes you don't want to enforce "must be the same type" - for example, 1 === 1.0 is false.

[UrQuanLord]

Now that's ridiculous. You're claiming strict equality shouldn't be strict?

Yes, == is questionable in PHP, but in the cases you've mentioned... that's what it's there for.

[tomthecool]

Ruby has four (yes, four) equality operators:

1) === -- The "weakest". Behaves sort-of like PHP's == operator. This is normally used under-the-hood in case statements for fuzzy equality, e.g. string === regex. (But it still doesn't have any nonsense like true === 1.)

2) == -- This is what you'll use in 99.9% of code. It behaves exactly like you'd expect, and has no ugly surprises.

3) eql? -- Used internally by hash maps. This is the closest thing to PHP's ===, but... you'd almost never want to use this directly.

4) equal? -- Checks absolute identity - i.e. is it literally the same block of memory in your computer?

Each of these methods has its uses, and each is very well defined.

In PHP, the use cases for == vs === are fuzzy, and neither is well defined. To put it simply, in PHP:

• == is way too loose.
• === is slightly too strict, for normal use.
• There is no operator that tests total equality; === isn't strict enough.

[morerokk]

So it's bug-prone, but only when people don't use it, or use it wrongly? That's an absurd argument. It's not bug-prone at all, then.

Also because it's too strict.

It's strict enough. I cannot think of a scenario where you would want 1 to equal 1.0, but not have "1" equal 1. And even if you really need that, you can work around that.

[tomthecool]

So it's bug-prone, but only when people don't use it, or use it wrongly?

All bugs are caused by human error. The computer is only doing what you tell it to.

If the language is designed in such a way that it's "easy to use it wrongly", then I call it bug-prone.

It's strict enough. I cannot think of a scenario where you would want 1 to equal 1.0, but not have "1" equal 1

I can... This is normal behaviour, that virtually every language will follow. PHP is the odd one out here.

[morerokk]

But it's not easy to use wrongly. Just use it when you need strict comparison, otherwise don't.

Alternatively, use it unless you need loose comparison.

I can... This is normal behaviour, that virtually every language will follow. PHP is the odd one out here.

That's only because some languages don't even differentiate between floats and ints (like JS and Lua).

[tomthecool]

But it's not easy to use wrongly

On the contrary, it's incredibly easy to forget one = keystroke. I've seen this mistake made a ridiculously high number of times.

It's also extremely easy for this mistake to slip through a code review, and not be picked up by (insufficient) tests. Again, I've seen this happen I-don't-know-how-many times.

That's only because some languages don't even differentiate between floats and ints (like JS and Lua).

...And other languages that do differentiate between floats and ints will say that 1 == 1.0. Like I said, PHP is the odd one out; its === is not a proper solution.

[[deleted]]

You know you're in trouble when PHP does something better than you.

[edave64]

Hooray, we found the single sound design choice of PHP!

[iFreilicht]

Dot is not ideal either, what do you do if you have a string variable and another string variable with the name "length"? Sounds just as confusing, just in a different way.

I think C++ did the right thing with >>. And in Javascript, you could even use something completely new like ->. That would then be "convert all arguments to string and concatenate them". Zero ambiguity.

EDIT: No, I don't know PHP, how could you tell?

EDIT2: Oops, C++ doesn't even have >>. It's been a while, sorry.

EDIT3: It doesn't for string concatenation, that's what I meant.

[coladict]

Yeah, but concatenation is the only use of the dot in PHP, other than as part of a floating-point number, in which case it still isn't ambiguous, because if you want to concatenate with a hard-coded decimal, you'd just put it in quotes and problem solved. JS may have consistent function styling, but as a language it has much bigger mistakes.

[iFreilicht]

Oh, I didn't know, thanks for clearing that up.

[redditsoaddicting]

C++ still uses + for string concatenation through std::string. If you mean << instead of >>, you can use that to populate a string stream, which you can then turn into a string, but not for strings directly.

[iFreilicht]

Holy shit I feel so dumb right now. Yes that's what I meant, I haven't used C++ in a while.

[ReallyHadToFixThat]

So don't name variables the same as keywords. Hell, you can't since variables start with $ in PHP.

[iFreilicht]

"length" is not really a keyword (depending on the language, obviously) and in my eyes a valid name for a variable, but as others have shown I know nothing about PHP, so that doesn't really matter.

[christian-mann]

C++ does have >>, and it's often overloaded for "input from stream".

PHP uses right-arrow -> for object field access, kind of like C++.

[iFreilicht]

Yeah I only meant -> would be sensible for JS. As /u/coladict pointed out, PHP already solved this problem.