Question

I have the following variable:

$argument = 'blue widget';

Which I pass in the following function:

widgets($argument);

The widgets function has two variables in it:

$price = '5';
$demand ='low';

My questions is how can I do the following:

 $argument = 'blue widget'.$price.' a bunch of other text';
 widgets($argument);
 //now have function output argument with the $price variable inserted where I wanted.

• I don’t want to pass $price to the function
• price is made available once inside the function

Is there any sound way I can do this or do I need to rethink my design?

Answer 1

Off the top of my head, there are two ways to do this:

1. Pass in two arguments

   widget($initText, $finalText) {
       echo $initText . $price . $finalText;
   }
   

2. Use a placeholder

   $placeholder = "blue widget {price} a bunch of other text";   
   widget($placeholder);
   
   function widget($placeholder) {
        echo str_replace('{price}',$price,$placeholder);
   }
   // within the function, use str_replace
   

Here’s an example: http://codepad.org/Tme2Blu8