Posted this on the function-handling function page, but it seems it's a topic here too.
I've developed an easy-to-use hack using these functions to emulate overloaded functions. It's especially handy for constructors and/or C++ style templating.
Here's a little example to get you going. This does the trick for most circumstances, and if you need more intelligent parsing, it's not too hard to implement with regex or a more suitable classification scheme.
N.B. Note the lack of whitespace between variable types in case strings.
class Matrix {
...
function Matrix() {
$args = func_get_args();
$argmatch = implode(",", array_map('gettype', $args));
switch( $argmatch ) {
case 'integer,integer':
//initialize m x n matrix
break;
case 'integer,integer,integer':
//initialize m x n matrix with constant c
break;
case 'integer,integer,float':
//initialize m x n matrix with constant c
break;
case 'array':
//initialize from array (2D....)
break;
case 'array,integer':
//intialize from array (1D packed with m rows)
break;
default:
//(void) overload?
//error handling?
break;
}
}
...
}
How to change configuration settings
