note 104697 deleted from language.functions by danbrown

Note Submitter: Miguel Prez ---- PHP functions bite. Unlike anonymous functions, named functions are not closures and they cannot access their static environment (i.e. no use clause). Furthermore, the interpreter breaks miserably if you attempt to redefine a function or call an undefined function, throwing an uncatchable error that may break your application horribly. So much for custom error handlers. Finally, named functions are not first-class values, and while you can set a variable to a string with the name of the named function and use () on it to call the function, there's no real function type for named functions, which means you can't tell function names from strings, and, what's worse, it can be a security wart considering you may accidentally read such values from files or user input, as they are mere strings.