Coalescing operation in PHP (for default values)

Over the past week or so I have been reading discussions on the PHP internals mailing-list about proposed updates to what the ?: operator currently does. If you are like me, you may not have even known that you could use the ternary operator (since 5.3) as a coalescing operator. It however is a simple example of syntaxic sugar to cut down on code noise, allowing you to specify an alternative (default) value if the supplied variable is falsey. In effect, assuming a null defined variable ‘$a’, the examples below will all equate to the same result ‘b’.

$a = $a ?: 'b';
if ( ! $a) $a = 'b';
$a || $a = 'b';
$a or $a = 'b';

However, issues arise when the variable has not already been declared, in such a case notice messages will be displayed. This is due to attempting to use the non-existent variable out right, without checking with the ‘is_set’ or ‘empty’ functions first. This is one of the key areas being addressed in the proposed update. The examples below, more verbosely than desired, address this issue at present.

$a = empty($a) ?: 'b';
isset($a) && ! $a or $a = 'b';
(isset($a) && ! $a) || $a = 'b';

In regard to the middle one, we are taking advantage of OR/AND’s lower operator precedence, removing the need for brackets (found in the last one). I should point out however, that mixing the two can be a recipe for debug-hell, and it would be best practise to maintain expressing such statements using && and ||.