[dgb23]

I'm not worried about the deprecation itself. I'm worried about the second argument you're making. This RFC trades stability for nicer syntax that isn't really needed. PHP is already great with strings. If the deprecation was indefinite and there wasn't a language feature waiting that relies on removing this, then I would not be worried at all. Will the implications be bad in this case? Probably not? It's the mentality behind that makes me uneasy.

[dhzhzjsbevs]

PHP has been modernising for years. This particular change feels like a bad move to me (pointless) but it's part in parcel with them modernising overall and I don't want to discourage that as most of the improvements have been extremely beneficial. Speed upgrade from 5 to 7 was insane.