note 78123 added to language.references.return

I haven't seen anyone note method chaining in PHP5. When an object is returned by a method in PHP5 it is returned by default as a reference, and the new Zend Engine 2 allows you to chain method calls from those returned objects. For example consider this code: <?php class Foo { protected $bar; public function __construct() { $this->bar = new Bar(); print "Foo\n"; } public function getBar() { return $this->bar; } } class Bar { public function __construct() { print "Bar\n"; } public function helloWorld() { print "Hello World\n"; } } function test() { return new Foo(); } test()->getBar()->helloWorld(); ?> Notice how we called test() which was not on an object, but returned an instance of Foo, followed by a method on Foo, getBar() which returned an instance of Bar and finally called one of its methods helloWorld(). Those familiar with other interpretive languages (Java to name one) will recognize this functionality. For whatever reason this change doesn't seem to be documented very well, so hopefully someone will find this helpful. ---- Server IP: 64.71.164.2 Probable Submitter: 72.22.26.23 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.references.return.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/78123 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/78123/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/78123/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/78123/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/78123/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/78123/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/78123/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/78123 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/78123 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php