Re: function overloading

Hi! > On 3 Dec 2014, at 21:40, Robert Stoll <php@tutteli.ch> wrote: > > Heya, > > > > I would like to know If it is somehow possible to overload existing functions by extensions. > And if it is possible, are > there already some extension doing it? Possibly in an extension, maybe. But as a weakly-typed, dynamic, reflective language, overloading of functions is both a bad idea (unpredictable program execution) and unnecessary (types can be checked at runtime, optional parameters exist). I also don't think overloading of functions is a good idea generally, it leads to horrible APIs where there are 28 different versions of a function each taking differently-typed arguments in different orders. I am glad PHP largely lacks this madness, it makes it an easier language to read and to write. Overloading isn't needed: use optional parameters, a named options associative array, or check argument types within the function. If what you're doing doesn't fit into those categories, maybe you need to make a separate function. > I am not talking about the magic __call function. I am talking about something like: let's > assume GMP has overloaded the > function "abs" and therefore one can write: > $n = gmp_init(-12345678901234567890); > abs($n+ 2); // instead of using gmp_abs > > > > I know that GMP has overloaded operators so it doesn't seem so far that overloading > functions is possible as well. Being able to change APIs provided by other libraries from your library sounds like a bad idea. If you just want abs() to work on bignums, my Big Integer Support RFC would handle that. :) -- Andrea Faulds http://ajf.me/