All,
I'm sure this has been asked somewhere, but since I see requests for
features for 5.2 or 6.0, I'd like to add a "simple" item to the list
which would be quite useful to me and would simplify and clean up a lot
of code out there:
function coalesce(...)
This works much like in the SQL version of the same. In SQL, the
function returns the first non-null argument from an arbitrary list. In
our use, it should return the first non-empty value from the list:
Example:
$x = "dante";
$y = "";
$z = "";
$value = coalesce($z, $y, $x); // $value = "dante"
This function would ideally be built into the language and bypass
warnings about undefined variables like 'empty' does. It might be nice
to have several varieties of this function:
* return first parameter where empty() is FALSE
* return first parameter where isset() is TRUE
I don't think something like this can NOT be written in userspace
because the 'isset' and 'empty' checks need to be run before arguments
can be passed to a user function or warnings will start flying. A
function like this simplifies code which used to look like this:
if (!empty($_POST["postkey"])) {
$value = $_POST["postkey"];
}
elseif (!empty($_GET["getkey"])) {
$value = $_POST["getkey"];
}
elseif (!empty($default_value)) {
$value = $default_value;
}
else {
$value = "hard coded value";
}
Into this:
$value = coalesce($_POST["postkey"], $_GET["getkey"],
$default_value, "hard coded value");
Can this be built and included?
Dante
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