note 95254 added to overload.examples.basic

While the term "overloading" in many other languages specifically means declaring multiple methods with the same name and having the compiler intelligently select which one should be run at any given time, this (as some have pointed out) is not the case in PHP, for a very simple yet important reason: PHP is a weakly/dynamically typed language; the only exceptions to this rule are constants (which have certain type restrictions, e.g. array) and Type-Hinted method arguments. Because of this, traditional overloading style is simply not possible, as there is no way for the interpreter to know which method to call (reliably). However, with PHP's ability to accept an indefinite number of undefined arguments via func_get_args() and related functions, as well as simply provide defaults to values to allow you to declare just one method and perform simple tests to see if some/all of the arguments were indeed passed, traditional means of method overloading are not entirely necessary. It may not be what you're used to, but it works. ---- Server IP: 64.71.164.2 Probable Submitter: 209.155.240.195 ---- Manual Page -- http://www.php.net/manual/en/overload.examples.basic.php Edit -- https://master.php.net/note/edit/95254 Del: integrated -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/95254/integrated Del: useless -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/95254/useless Del: bad code -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/95254/bad+code Del: spam -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/95254/spam Del: non-english -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/95254/non-english Del: in docs -- https://master.php.net/note/delete/95254/in+docs Del: other reasons-- https://master.php.net/note/delete/95254 Reject -- https://master.php.net/note/reject/95254 Search -- https://master.php.net/manage/user-notes.php