intelephense error on VS Code: Expected type 'string'. Found 'string[]'

Question

Suppose the following piece of code:

<?php
declare (strict_types = 1);

define('SOURCE_PATH', 'C:\xampp\htdocs\atlantis\ProductImages\\');

$dest = explode('\\', SOURCE_PATH);
$dest[count($dest) - 2] = 'ToUpload';
$dest = implode('\\', $dest);

function transfer(string $file)
{
    global $dest;

    if (!@chdir($dest)) {
        mkdir($dest);
        chdir($dest);
    }

    // ...
}

function compress(string $path)
{
    global $dest;

    $zip = new ZipArchive();
    $zip->open(dirname($dest, 1) . '\\' . explode('\\', SOURCE_PATH)[count(explode('\\', SOURCE_PATH)) - 2] . '.zip', ZipArchive::CREATE | ZipArchive::OVERWRITE);

    // ...
}

So, intelephense on VS Code keeps complaining about Expected type 'string'. Found 'string[]'. on all four instances where I use $dest in my functions...

What's that intelephense doesn't like about my code? Note that page runs fine... And what's that string[] type? implode() returns a string, so what's the problem here?

EDIT: It's most probably a bug of intelephense...

I calculated $dest like this:

$dest = dirname(SOURCE_PATH, 1) . '\ToUpload\\';

which doesn't involve explode()ing, and indeed the error is gone... So somehow intelephense fails to take into consideration that implode() returns a string and not an array...

Actually, I filed a bug report on github and I'm awaiting Mewburn's response on this... :)

Caretaker

Answer 1

Global variables can be a little bit wonky in intelephense, an issue already exists to improve the support. In this specific case, the type that is inferred is determined by the first assignment. Since that is the explode statement, it'll assume $dest is an array of strings.

There are a couple of solutions to this:

• Make sure to intelephense what the type of $dest is with comments.

  function transfer(string $file)
  {
      /** @var string $dest */
      global $dest;
  }
  

• Make sure the first assignment of $dest actually is a string:

  $tempdest = explode('\\', SOURCE_PATH);
  $tempdest[count($tempdest) - 2] = 'ToUpload';
  $dest = implode('\\', $dest);
  

Lymphocyte

Is there any way to have intelephense work properly with a global array containing both strings and ints? – Pintail

Answer 2

I think, it's because the implode parameters have been changed.

https://www.php.net/manual/de/migration74.deprecated.php says the following:

Implode with historical parameter order Passing parameters to implode() in reverse order is deprecated, use implode($glue, $parts) instead of implode($parts, $glue).

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