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Array key access on non-array values - to be made illegal?

php.internals

Marco Pivetta

10 years ago

Hello,

I just stumbled upon behavior that seems to "fail silently" regardless of
its very questionable validity:

<?php

$a = 1;

var_dump($a[123]); // NULL, no notice

https://3v4l.org/b3rDr

Are there specific reasons why no notice is thrown? Is it by design? If so,
does anyone remember why?

I haven't checked if this affects other types too. I know that an
assignment to an array key of a non-array would cause a cast of the value
to `array`, but a mere read operation should surely cause a notice to be
raised in the above scenario.

Cheers,

Marco Pivetta

http://twitter.com/Ocramius

http://ocramius.github.com/

Ivan Enderlin @ Hoa

10 years ago

Hello Marco,

Actually, you are trying to access to something that does not exist, so
you get a null value. This part is logical. However, yes, a notice would
be welcomed except it may be skipped for historical reasons I reckon.
Probably to work well with `isset` or similar scenario.

Cheers.

On 12/04/16 14:59, Marco Pivetta wrote:

Christoph Becker

10 years ago

On 12.04.2016 at 14:59, Marco Pivetta wrote:

> I just stumbled upon behavior that seems to "fail silently" regardless of
> its very questionable validity:
>
> <?php
>
> $a = 1;
>
> var_dump($a[123]); // NULL, no notice
>
> https://3v4l.org/b3rDr
>
> Are there specific reasons why no notice is thrown? Is it by design? If so,
> does anyone remember why?
>
> I haven't checked if this affects other types too. I know that an
> assignment to an array key of a non-array would cause a cast of the value
> to `array`, but a mere read operation should surely cause a notice to be
> raised in the above scenario.

For the record: there are several bug reports/feature requests regarding
this issue, e.g. <https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=37676>.

--
Christoph M. Becker