Waiting for 5.6: Variadic Functions
An RFC for Variadic Functions has been voted on and accepted by PHP developers, and should make it into the next release (5.6).
Variadic functions are ones that accept a variable, or infinite, amount of arguments. There are already internal
functions in PHP that support this (as C does), such as sprintf where you can pass it any number of
arguments.
<?php
sprintf($format, $arg1, $arg2, $arg3);
Currently, if you wanted to support this in a user-land PHP function or method, you’d have to use the func_get_args()
family of functions to determine what was passed beyond the definition. Now, with this accepted RFC, you can define a
function like follows (stolen straight from the RFC):
<?php
public function query($query, ...$params) {
$stmt = $this->pdo->prepare($query);
$stmt->execute($params);
return $stmt;
}
$params will be an array of every additional argument passed to that method.
Checkout the RFC for more examples and details.
* The idea for the “Waiting for…” posts graciously stolen from depesz. Checkout his fantastic PostgreSQL blog.
