Functions
PHP has hundreds of base functions and thousands more from extensions. Functions are not first-class functions and can only be referenced by their name prior to PHP version 5.3.0, whereas PHP 5.3.0 introduces closures. User-defined functions can be created at any time and without being prototyped. Functions can be defined inside code blocks, permitting a run-time decision as to whether or not a function should be defined. There is no concept of local functions. Function calls must use parentheses with the exception of zero argument class constructor functions called with the PHP new operator, where parentheses are optional.
An example function definition is the following:
Prior to version 5.3, PHP only supports quasi-anonymous functions through the create_function function. These are not true anonymous functions because anonymous functions are nameless but functions can only be referenced by name in PHP. As of version 5.3, PHP supports true anonymous functions.
Function calls may be made via variables, where the value of a variable contains the name of the function to call. This is illustrated in the following example:
PHP does not support named parameters or parameter skipping. Some core PHP developers have publicly expressed disappointment with this decision. Others have suggested workarounds for this limitation.
Read more about this topic: PHP Syntax And Semantics
Famous quotes containing the word functions:
“Let us stop being afraid. Of our own thoughts, our own minds. Of madness, our own or others’. Stop being afraid of the mind itself, its astonishing functions and fandangos, its complications and simplifications, the wonderful operation of its machinery—more wonderful because it is not machinery at all or predictable.”
—Kate Millett (b. 1934)
“The mind is a finer body, and resumes its functions of feeding, digesting, absorbing, excluding, and generating, in a new and ethereal element. Here, in the brain, is all the process of alimentation repeated, in the acquiring, comparing, digesting, and assimilating of experience. Here again is the mystery of generation repeated.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“One of the most highly valued functions of used parents these days is to be the villains of their children’s lives, the people the child blames for any shortcomings or disappointments. But if your identity comes from your parents’ failings, then you remain forever a member of the child generation, stuck and unable to move on to an adulthood in which you identify yourself in terms of what you do, not what has been done to you.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)