Function with variable number of paramet

[Anon]

Hi,

Is there a way to have a function with a variable number of parameters?

Note : I don't want to pass the parameters with an array 🙂

Example :

function("1", "2", "3")

or

function("1", "2", "3", "4", "5")

I don't want neither to initialize the parameters in the function, because I don't know how much I will have.

Thanks.

[cvincent]

Yes...this is very possible and it took me exactly 3 seconds to find it on the php web page 🙂 Please search before posting.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/functions.php

Define the function like:
function test($one, $two, $three) {
print "$one : $two : $three";
}

and call it like:
test("First one", "Second", "Last");

it it will print:
First one : Second : Last

-Chris

[Anon]

Well you didn't exactly address her problem; probably that 3-second attention span ;-)

What she wanted to know is if there was a way to define a function without a "pre-defined" number on incoming parameters so that sometimes she could pass 3 and sometimes 10 or whatever. She also said she didn't want to have to initialize them in the function because she didn't know how many there would be.

AFAIK your function has to know how many parms are (possibly) coming in. You can define some of the parms as "optional" by declaring them with an initializer like:

function myFunction(p1=0, p2=0, p3=0) {
// function stuff
}

...but you still need to know how many possible parms you will have.

The question I have for Natasha is; "what is your function going to do with the parms if it doesn't even know how many are coming in?"

The (maybe) obvious answer is that the parms you want to pass are a homogeonous list of varables or numbers that your function will work on in a loop? Maybe a list of users or something? In that case, you are probably better off passing the list of parms to the function as an array and working on the array.

-- Rich Rijnders
-- Irvine, CA US

[[deleted]]

hey Rich, you might want to do something about your atention span too :-)

It took me about 4 seconds (I am a lazy bugger) to find this in the manual:

Big note: this is PHP4 only. (but then again, do we even remember php3?🙂 )

-- quote from php manual --

func_num_args

(PHP4 >= 4.0b4)

func_num_args -- Returns the number of arguments passed to the function

Description

int func_num_args (void )

Returns the number of arguments passed into the current user-defined function. Func_num_args() will generate a warning if called from outside of a function
definition.

<?php
function foo() {
$numargs = func_num_args();
echo "Number of arguments: $numargs\n";
}

foo (1, 2, 3); // Prints 'Number of arguments: 3'
?>

Func_num_args() may be used in conjunction with func_get_arg() and func_get_args() to allow user-defined functions to accept variable-length argument lists.

 Note: This function was added in PHP 4. 

-- end of quote --

[bowman795]

thats called polymorphism and it isn't supported in any version of PHP

the abovementioned thing i just a hack for it