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PHP has hundreds of base functions and thousands more from extensions. Prior to PHP version 5.3.0, functions are not first-class functions and can only be referenced by their name, whereas PHP 5.3.0 introduces closures. [35] User-defined functions can be created at any time and without being prototyped. [35]
Variable names should be short yet meaningful. The choice of a variable name should be mnemonic — that is, designed to indicate to the casual observer the intent of its use. One-character variable names should be avoided except for temporary "throwaway" variables.
The term closure is often used as a synonym for anonymous function, though strictly, an anonymous function is a function literal without a name, while a closure is an instance of a function, a value, whose non-local variables have been bound either to values or to storage locations (depending on the language; see the lexical environment section below).
A function signature consists of the function prototype. It specifies the general information about a function like the name, scope and parameters. Many programming languages use name mangling in order to pass along more semantic information from the compilers to the linkers. In addition to mangling, there is an excess of information in a ...
The identifier list is bound to a variable in the first line; in the second, an object (a linked list of strings) is assigned to the variable. The linked list referenced by the variable is then mutated, adding a string to the list. Next, the variable is assigned the constant null. In the last line, the identifier is rebound for the scope of the ...
As of 21 November 2024 (the day of PHP 8.4's release), PHP is used as the server-side programming language on 75.4% of websites where the language could be determined; PHP 7 is the most used version of the language with 49.1% of websites using PHP being on that version, while 37.9% use PHP 8, 12.9% use PHP 5 and 0.1% use PHP 4. [19]
PHP has a global keyword and a number of unusual ways of using global variables. Variables declared outside functions have file scope (which is for most purposes the widest scope). However, they are not accessible inside functions unless imported with the global keyword (i.e., the keyword accesses global variables, it does not declare them).
Some use the terms "keyword" and "reserved word" interchangeably, while others distinguish usage, say by using "keyword" to mean a word that is special only in certain contexts but "reserved word" to mean a special word that cannot be used as a user-defined name.