The Php Times

The vote on the Deprecations for PHP 8.6 RFC has passed, yet the discussion on the internals list shows the proposal leaves open questions around CSV handling in SPL.

Robert Humphries raises two objections. First, the RFC does not state what existing code should migrate to. Code built around SplFileObject::fputcsv() cannot simply switch to the procedural fputcsv(), because that function expects a stream resource and is therefore not a drop-in replacement.

Second, the SplFileObject::READ_CSV flag is not part of the deprecation. setCsvControl() is the only way to configure delimiter, enclosure and escape character for READ_CSV, since the constructor does not accept them. If setCsvControl() disappears in PHP 9 while READ_CSV survives, the flag is locked to its defaults and tab-separated files can no longer be read through it. The default value of $escape is itself already deprecated and scheduled to change.

Humphries concludes that either READ_CSV should be deprecated alongside the four methods, or setCsvControl() should be kept until a replacement API exists. A follow-up note points out that with the vote passed, deprecating READ_CSV as well appears necessary. Otherwise code using READ_CSV would behave differently across PHP versions once the $escape default changes, with no way to make it consistent manually.