Question

I’ve seen a few people ask a similar question. But I do need a little more clarification on this particular subject.

I have several functions that pass several arguments. I even have a few that are about 10 arguments. (didn’t initially plan it, simply grew over time)

I don’t have any problems looking at my source code to find out what the 7th argument is, but it does get tedious. Most of the time I know what arguments to pass, just not the position.

I had a few ideas to simplify the process for me.

a) pass 1 argument, but divide everything with some delimiter. (but that’s a bad idea!, since I still need to remember the position of each.

function myfunc('data|data|data|'){
          // explode the string
}

b) pass an array with key and values, and look for the key names inside my function, and act accordingly.

function myfunc(array('arg1' => 'blah blah', 'arg2' => 'more blah')){
  // loop through the array
}

c) keep it as it is.

function myfunc($arg1,$arg2,$arg3,$arg4,$arg5........){
// yay

}

So, I’m seeking other options and better ideas for handling functions with growing argument lists.

Answer 1

b) (an associative array) is by far the easiest, most adaptible (as it allows simulating default keyword arguments), and least error-prone variant.