Yeah, PHP sometimes pretends it's a C derivative. I think it's a stupid idea most of the time, especially with regard to strings. C string handling isn't anything scripting languages should copy.

Besides, PHP now has its own (partly duplicate) class-based stdlib for some things, why not be consistent and "replace" all of the old stdlib?

> C string handling isn't anything scripting languages should copy.

Or C-like imports, it's ridiculous tbh, inlcude, inlcude_once, require, require_once.

My understanding is that PHP started as a basic templating language, a way to embed c function calls as tags in HTML.

In that way it's ingenious, people keep reinventing it with JSX, filesystem routing etc. Right now I'm thinking PHP should've gone the other way. Instead of adopting features to resemble other general purpose languages (things like classes from java and so on) it should've doubled down on web stuff, like JSX - in the sense of having a nice syntax for partials/components, eg <php-component props /> instead of <?php echo php_component(props) ?> and other comfort features, to become a platform.