Question

I saw a library with a method named “do”

public function do

totally bugs out parser
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_DO, expecting T_STRING in …

//same on call 
$obj->do() 

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_DO, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or ‘$’ in

Gearman Uses a “do” function by the way.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/gearmanclient.do.php

Answer 1

“do” is a reserved keyword: http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.keywords.php

On that same page, in the comments, you see a user mention a way around this. Bear in mind that this method must be used with care:

// Now define a __call() method (requires PHP > 5.2.3 to take effect)
public function __call($func, $args)
{
    switch ($func)
    {
        case 'list':
            return $this->ls((isset($args[0]))? $args[0]: null);
        break;
        case 'unset':
            return $this->rm($args[0]);
        break;
        default:
            trigger_error("Call to undefined method ".__CLASS__."::$func()", E_USER_ERROR);
        die ();
    }

So you see, you could use a do method (or some other reserved word) in any class by using the __call overload. Externally, this method would be indistinguishable from a traditionally defined method.