**Porters,
Every once in a while, somebody suggests that "exists $arr[3]" can be useful. This is almost never true, and most often based on a misapprehension of what it means. (No, it's not a sparse array. No, it's not a useful test of array length.)
I think it's time to deprecate this behavior so it can be fatalized, as "defined @array" finally was. The reasoning here is "this feature is not useful, and is providing a leak into our abstraction. It confuses experts and new users alike, and is unlikely to be performing important work in real code."
This is a "What objections, if any, still stand in the way of doing this?" email.
--
rjbs
Every once in a while, somebody suggests that "exists $arr[3]" can be useful. This is almost never true, and most often based on a misapprehension of what it means. (No, it's not a sparse array. No, it's not a useful test of array length.)
I think it's time to deprecate this behavior so it can be fatalized, as "defined @array" finally was. The reasoning here is "this feature is not useful, and is providing a leak into our abstraction. It confuses experts and new users alike, and is unlikely to be performing important work in real code."
This is a "What objections, if any, still stand in the way of doing this?" email.
--
rjbs