Question

I am wondering if php methods are ever defined outside of the class body as they are often done in C++. I realise this question is the same as Defining class methods in PHP . But I believe his original question had ‘declare’ instead of ‘define’ so all the answers seem a bit inappropriate.

Update:

Probably my idea of define and declare were flawed. But by define outside of the class body, i meant something equivalent to the C++

class CRectangle {
    int x, y;
  public:
    void set_values (int,int);
    int area () {return (x*y);}
};

void CRectangle::set_values (int a, int b) {
  x = a;
  y = b;
}

All the examples of php code have the the code inside the class body like a C++ inlined function. Even if there would be no functional difference between the two in PHP, its just a question of style.

Answer 1

Having the declaration of methods in header files separate from their implementation is, to my knowledge, pretty unique to C/C++. All other languages I know don’t have it at all, or only in limited form (such as interfaces in Java and C#)