On the Exakat blog there's a new post sharing some of the weird operators in PHP that you may have not known existed. These are ones outside of the normal = or . that can really do some odd things.

If you read the PHP documentation, you will learn about a ton of operators. If you haven’t learnt about PHP operators, go do that first, we’ll wait for you.

Operators are usually made up with strange symbols, like !, -, =>, <=>, ^ or ~. Really, some are plain readable like and, while some are merely an missed attempt at being readable, and actually hide a double personnality, like xor.

You probably think you know PHP’s documentation in and out, but there is always more to learn. So I dove deep into the core of PHP code, and looked some special PHP operators that are lesser known, but very useful in your daily coding.

There's ten of the odd operators on their list including:

• the "b" operator for strings
• the "left object" operator
• constant names with * and %

Check out the full post for the details (and code examples) on each of these and more.

Larry Garfield has a new post to his site sharing a method for short and safe array iteration based on a "neat trick" he picked up reading a mailing list.

PHP's largely loose, dynamic typing has plenty of both pros and cons. One con in particular is that you don't always know for sure if a value you're trying to use has been set yet, or is non-null. PHP will dutifully whine at you if you try to use a null value, sometimes fatally. (Yet another reason to structure your code to avoid nulls, period.)

One place this comes up in particular is in foreach() loops, especially when working with nested array structures. (PHP lacks a struct type, but makes anonymous hash maps so easy that they get used as the uber data type, for better or worse.)

He gives an example of looping through a dataset with a foreach where the array index reference is used to reference the source array. While you could always wrap the loop in an if statement to check first, he has another interesting method to do the same thing. With the help of the null-coalesce operator (??) in PHP 7, you can essentially say: "if the array index referenced is null/does not exist, use an empty set". Check out the rest of the post for code examples putting this method to use.

In a post to the SitePoint PHP site editor Bruno Skvorc wonders if bitwise operators are still relevant in modern PHP development.

Many of you probably scratched your heads reading this title. “Bitwhat?”

In this article, we’ll look at what bitwise operators are, and whether or not their use is still relevant in this modern age of computing.

He starts off by illustrating a common use case for the bitwise operators in evaluating user permissions. He first proposes doing things on the database side, creating tables for double or single joins that could get us the information we need. He also shows an approach for what he calls a "column stampede": adding a new column to the user table when a new permission is needed. Instead he proposes the bitwise option, first explaining how values are stored and then showing how with a single value, you could potentially store all of a user's permissions in one field. Next he shows how to perform the select to determine of a user has a set of permissions and how to store them when making an insert/update.

On the SitePoint PHP blog there's a new post from Bert Ramakers showing you how to create strictly typed arrays and collections in PHP.

One of the language features announced back in PHP 5.6 was the addition of the ... token to denote that a function or method accepts a variable length of arguments.

Something I rarely see mentioned is that it’s possible to combine this feature with type hints to essentially create typed arrays.

He starts with an example of a class/method that only takes in a certain type of objects as a collection (using the "...") with a fatal thrown if anything else is given. He also shows how to do the same thing with scalar types and the "..." operator with a typed input. He does point out one problem with this approach, namely that if more complex input is required the single type just wouldn't work. His solution involves custom collection classes where the settings are in the collection and not passed directly into the method. This collection then contains some of the base functionality (like getting an average value from a set of floats) and can be enhanced with other typical interfaces to work like any other collection. He also presents another option: using value objects for validation of the input.

Freek Van der Herten has a post to his site showing how PHP functions can (sort of) be overloaded with the help of a trait from Adam Wathan.

PHP does not support method overloading. In case you’ve never heard of method overloading, it means that the language can pick a method based on which parameters you’re using to call it. This is possible in many other programming languages like Java, C++.

However, with some clever coding, Adam Wathan made a trait, aptly called Overloadable, that makes method overloading possible. It works by just accepting any parameters using the splat operator and then determining which of the given functions must be called according to the given parameters.

He shows how to use the trait in a simple example, defining a single "bar" function and using the "Overloadable" trait to handle the switching between the methods based on the input variables. You can find more information about the trait and the source for it in this gist over on GitHub.

The SitePoint blog has a new post that revisits a previous tutorial about implementing a custom operator - the "range" operator - natively in PHP itself. In this new article (again, a repost from the article by Thomas Punt) he comes back and refines the implementation a bit to fix some of the issues with the previous version.

In the prequel to this article (hint: make sure you’ve read it first), I showed one way to implement a range operator in PHP. Initial implementations, however, are rarely the best, and so it is the intention of this article to look at how the previous implementation can be improved.

He starts by mentioning some of the drawbacks to the previous implementation, mostly that the computation of the value would only happen at runtime (slower) and not compile time. He then goes through the code from before and shares the updates to make that allow this compile-time option to work on the lexer, parser and adding in new code for the compilation stage. Finally he makes the updates the Zend VM to allow for these changes to take effect.

The SitePoint PHP blog has a new tutorial posted (a repost from this article used with permission) about implementing a new operator in the PHP core language: a "range" operator. This operator allows the definition of a range of values (integer/float) as an internal PHP representation.

In the post below, Thomas Punt implements the range operator in PHP. If you’ve ever been interested in PHP internals and adding features to your favorite programming language, now’s the time to learn! This article will demonstrate how to implement a new operator in PHP. The following steps will be taken to do this: updating the lexer, updating the parser, updating the compilation stage and updating the Zend VM. This article therefore seeks to provide a brief overview of a number of PHP’s internal aspects.

He starts with a look at the range operator and how the intended functionality would work (including when the errors would be thrown). He then goes through the steps listed above and makes additions to the source, complete with the C code to make each change. The article is not only a good look at how to add a custom operator but also gives a good overview of the internals of PHP and how things fit together.

Lorna Mitchell has a post to her site talking about a new addition to PHP in the upcoming major release of PHP 7 - the null coalesce operator. Despite its slightly confusing name, the operator is very handy for certain use cases with the ternary syntax.

Not the catchiest name for an operator, but PHP 7 brings in the rather handy null coalesce so I thought I'd share an example. In PHP 5, we already have a ternary operator, which tests a value, and then returns the second element if that returns true and the third if it doesn't. [...] There is also a shorthand for that which allows you to skip the second element if it's the same as the first one.

[...] In PHP 7 we additionally get the ?? operator which rather than indicating extreme confusion which is how I would usually use two question marks together instead allows us to chain together a string of values.

She includes an example of this new operator in use, chaining together a simple expression and showing the resulting output. It's a little confusing at first, but then if you remember it reads left to right it clears it up a bit.

If you're relatively new to the PHP language, there's an interesting "shorthand" method for evaluation that you may not know about. In this new tutorial from NetTuts.com they show you this handy method - the ternary operator.

The ternary operator allows us to simplify some PHP conditional statements. We'll see how it can be used, with test-driven development and refactoring, to simplify code.

While the tutorial is largely a screencast, they do provide a quick summary of what the operator is mainly used for and an example for quick reference.

Lorna Mitchell has a new post to her site looking at a feature of the upcoming PHP 5.6 release, the splat operator (three ellipsis...).

We have a couple of new features coming in to PHP 5.6 with names that sound much less exciting than the features they actually represent: "variadic functions" sound positively academic, and "argument unpacking" isn't exactly catchy. However they both use a new operator in PHP which looks like an elipsis (three dots ...) and is referred to as either the splat operator or the scatter operator. I included them in a recent version of my "Upgrading PHP" talk so I thought I'd share the examples here too in case anyone is interested.

She includes an example of it being used in a variadic function, one that lets you define an optional number of parameters without having to resort to func_get_args. She also talks about "argument unpacking" or the passing in of an array of values with the splat to have it handled like a string. An example with the mail function is included.