functions question

Anon

I have used functions for simple things, nothing to advanced and I've noticed that in other scripts people pass variables and arguments in the parentheses when declaring and invoking functions, i.e:

function test($variable_1, $variable_2){

blah blah;

}

why would one do this and what can one achieve through doing it?

appreciate the help,

Eben

Anon

Functions are a crucial building block to modularizing your code and reducing redundancy. To get a more in depth look at functions you'll have to read a tutorial or textbook. Suffice it to say that as your code grows large you'll see why functions are necessary.

Anon

I definitely understand the value of functions, I store my sql connection code in a function and call it into being whenever I need to query the DB...

the part I don't get is why you might want to declare data in the parentheses of the function and what functionality that offers the function. I've seen it done in various scripts but never had a reason to do it myself, or perhaps if I understood why one would do that I could simplify my existing functions...

anyway, just curious

thnx

Anon

I believe you're talking about default values.

eg:

dbconnect( $host="localhost", $user="root", $pass="" );

This would allow you to call this by just using :

dbconnect();

If you wanted you could fill it out:

dbconnect( "localhost", "me", "mypass" );

Or maybe just parts of it:

dbconnect( "another server" ); // here the user and pass are automatically set to be root and blank.

It's largely a convenience and a means to have default values generated by default. It's far more useful when you can do function overloading as in C++ (php doesn't do this). Anyways, hope that helps.