I would like to make the language better and I have a proposal for a long time: make a new spelling to indicate the method and consider it the only correct one.
Example:

class Foo
{
    int $moo;

    function bar()
    {
        ...
    }
}

Line

Foo::method->bar

interpret as

[Foo::class, 'bar']

Pros:

• easier readability: it will be clear that this is an indication of a method, and not a strange array
• for ide it will be easier to understand what is happening now and suggest the name of the method.

Perhaps, if it was positively accepted by the community, it would open up possibilities such as specifying a typehint for Closure. And also, by analogy, you can make an indication of properties of class, having received the above described advantages.

Foo::property->moo

@ta-tikoma This sounds like https://wiki.php.net/rfc/first_class_callable_syntax, which is part of PHP 8.1.

@ta-tikoma This sounds like https://wiki.php.net/rfc/first_class_callable_syntax, which is part of PHP 8.1.

that's right, I'm wrong, with a different interpretation

Is it true this removes the ability to make deferred calls in those forms listed from PHP entirely?

I totally get the bottom two being removed as they're pretty nonsensical, but the top 6 don't currently have any other way of representing them, even if it's "often" undesired behaviour it might not be and seems odd to remove such a dynamic way of referencing a method call from a pretty dynamic language just because it might not be what people intended...

@ElvenSpellmaker Please see https://wiki.php.net/rfc/deprecate_partially_supported_callables#backward_incompatible_changes for suggested alternative spellings.

If by "deferred calls" you mean passing "self::foo" to a different class, such that "self" refers to a different class than self, then yes, this is being removed with prejudice.

Is there any easy way to figure out where these calls are being made? We're trying to get a working PHP 8.2 build for Laravel but we can't figure out where all the failures from this PR are coming: https://github.com/laravel/framework/runs/8183443527?check_suite_focus=true