How fucked is PHP?

If you thought that something was fucked up, you haven't seen the new, oh, so wonderful PHP DateTime and DateInterval interfaces. They will blow your mind.

$date = new DateTime(); // "2025-10-23 16:38:25.308372"
var_dump($date);

$interval = new DateInterval("PT30M");
var_dump($interval);

$newdate = $date->add($interval);
var_dump($newdate); // "2025-10-23 17:08:25.308372" - 30 min later

if($date == $newdate) echo "Equal"; // Prints 'Equal' - why?
$diff = $date->diff($newdate);
var_dump($diff); // All zeros - why?

echo $diff->format('%r%i'); // 0 - why?
echo $diff->format('%r%s'); // 0 - why?

$diff = $newdate->diff($date);
var_dump($diff); // All zeros - why?

echo $diff->format('%r%i'); // 0 - why?
echo $diff->format('%r%s'); // 0 - why?

So, we have two date/times, 30 minutes apart, but according to PHP they are equal.

I wasted almost 2 hours on this shit, trying to figure out if something in my code has expired or not. I can do this in C#, Java, TSQL, MySQL, all in a matter of a few seconds. In PHP? Nope. No soup for you, PHP developers. The collective won't let you know the difference between to date/times.

PS: And if you replace DateTime() with DateTimeImmutable(), then you will see the correct 30 min difference but still 0 second difference. What's this obsession with immutability where no one gives a fuck?

Posted by: LinuxLies at 04:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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