Question

Trying to figure out whether PHP supports features like method overloading, inheritance, and polymorphism, I found out:

• it does not support method overloading
• it does support inheritance

but I am unsure about polymorphism. I found this Googling the Internet:

I should note that in PHP the
polymorphism isn’t quite the way it
should be. I mean that it does work,
but since we have a weak datatype, its
not correct.

So is it really polymorphism?

Edit
Just can’t quite place a definite YES or NO next to PHP supports polymorphism. I would be loath to state: “PHP does not support polymorphism”, when in reality it does. Or vice-versa.

Answer 1

class Animal {
    var $name;
    function __construct($name) {
        $this->name = $name;
    }
}

class Dog extends Animal {
    function speak() {
        return "Woof, woof!";
    }
}

class Cat extends Animal {
    function speak() {
        return "Meow...";
    }
}

$animals = array(new Dog('Skip'), new Cat('Snowball'));

foreach($animals as $animal) {
    print $animal->name . " says: " . $animal->speak() . '<br>';
}

You can label it all you want, but that looks like polymorphism to me.