[zelphirkalt]

Look what I got here for you:

    docker run -it php:8.0 bash
    # php -a
    Interactive shell

    substr("abcdef", 3);
    // no result

-- Ah right, PHP does things differently than other almost every other language that has a REPL and I have to echo a value, which was just returned, even on the REPL ...

    php > echo substr("", 3);

-- Silently hiding the error. Idiocy.

    php > echo substr(null, 3);

-- Silently hiding the error. Idiocy.

    php > echo substr("abcdef", 3);
    def

Who is shit talking now? Are you suggesting, that all this is normal and OK? Nothing is fixed. It's still badly designed and probably will remain shitty like that, until PHP programmers finally realize, that this needs to be properly fixed.

EDIT: Of course the docs also do not mention this to happen at all and tell you, that the first argument must be a string. So I guess that means, that in PHP terms, null is a string. Great for type safety!