Question

I am wondering if I can set a variable to infinity, and if not what the best way to achieve my problem is. Take my function below:

public function seekValue($value, $column = null, $limit = null) {
  $this->connect('rb');
  $results = array();
  while (!feof($this->_pointer)) {
      $data = explode($this->_config->delimiter(), fgets($this->_pointer, 1024));
      if(!is_null($column)) {
          if ($data[$this->_config->columns($column, "string")->index()] == $value)
              array_push($results, $this->formatRow($data));
      } else {
          if (in_array($value, $data))
              array_push($results, $this->formatRow($data));
      }
  }
  $this->disconnect();
  switch (count($results)) {
      case 0;
          return false;
      case 1;
          return $results[0];
      default;
          return $results;
  }
}

I set $limit = null in the function parameter list, however I later want to use $limit in my while loop like so while (!feof($this->_pointer) && count($results) < $limit) incase the user decides to pass an integer to it.

If this was the case I could do this:

if (!is_int($limit)) {
  $limit = infinity;
}

To say that if $limit is not set run infinite times.

I hope this makes sense.

Answer 1

Why don’t you just adapt the condition:

while (!feof($this->_pointer) && ( ($limit === NULL) || (count($results) < $limit)) )