intl_date_format() function proposal

Draft; not accepted. The RFC page (version 1.0, dated and last modified 2026-09-28) lists its status as Draft and its target as PHP 8.7. It was not present in the collected official RFC index on 2026-10-02.

The proposal adds a procedural intl_date_format() to ext/intl, wrapping IntlDateFormatter so that a single call can format a DateTimeInterface, a Unix timestamp or a date string. Optional parameters cover locale, date/time style constants, timezone, calendar and an ICU pattern that overrides the style constants. The RFC says it returns a string on success, never false, and throws TypeError, ValueError or IntlException on errors. It describes an internal formatter cache and reports no backward-compatibility break.

Limitations: no discussion outcome was reviewed. Today, the same formatting is available through IntlDateFormatter objects. Related: Time\Instant and Time\Clock.