note 76308 added to language.oop5.decon

Hello. Here we go again. Delete my old entry if you wish. Trying to port a parser from C++ to PHP I came across that PHP doesn't support multiple constructors. I believe PHP lacks the possibility to create new objects out of different types of information without writing specialized functions. An example, which does not work: <?php class DocNode{ function __construct(DocNode $copyfrom, DocNode $parent = null, DocNode $insertAfter = null){ /* ... */} function __construct($type = 'text', $collapsable = false){ /* ... */} } ?> If you run that, you would get: Fatal error: Cannot redeclare DocNode::__construct() I guess one could fallback to passing an array to the constructor and inside the constructor determine what to make of that array, and so in a workaroundish way have multiple constructors all in one constructor. ---- Server IP: 208.69.120.35 Probable Submitter: 85.230.106.207 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.decon.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/76308 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/76308/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/76308/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/76308/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/76308/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/76308/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/76308/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/76308 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/76308 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php