Supporting more than two parameters with arithmetic

[jaspertey]

I found myself needing to perform an Add on three columns and ended up having to do:

new Add('treatments', new Add('assessments', 'no_shows'))

It would've been nice to do:

new Add('treatments', 'assessments', 'no_shows')

In general, to be able to specify more than two parameters (variable-length argument) with the arithmetic expressions. Would this be a welcomed enhancement? Or would this compromise the ability to support different databases?

It would involve changing the OperatorExpression's constructor (or introducing a MultiOperatorExpression since this wouldn't apply to all) to the effect of:

public function __construct(string|Expression ...$values)

Leveraging PHP's "Type declared variable arguments".

Would love to hear your thoughts on this.

[tpetry]

Sounds like a good change 👍

But you can't change the OperatorExpression abstract class as the comparison operators wouldn't make sense with more than two arguments. Currently I did use arrays to indicate an endless amount of arguments. But the artihmetic and bitwise operators are special as they need at least two arguments. Do the bitwise ones work with many arguments?

I prefer a new interface with params like __construct(string|Expression $value1, string|Expression $value2, string|Expression ...$values = []) to make sure that the constructor is called with at least two values.

[jaspertey]

Do the bitwise ones work with many arguments?

Yes, chaining multiple bitwise operators is mathematically valid... also checked on my local mariadb to confirm it doesn't complain.

Is this an update you'll be handling or is a PR welcome?

[tpetry]

a PR is welcome 😀

[tpetry]

@jaspertey Can you mark the discussion as answered as your PR has been merged?

[jaspertey]

Was a bit late seeing this, it got closed by you and no further action needed I take it?

[tpetry]

You pr-ed the change and its merged. So the discussion is solved by your feature request being implemented and available to use.