Variable Number Of Arguments

The subject of a variable number of arguements passed to a function pops up quite often. Here we show how easy this is with func_num_args(). The trick to achieving this is to the use of the PHP func_num_args function.



<?php

function numArgs()
{
    /*** the number of args ***/
    $numargs = func_num_args();

    /*** return the number of args ***/
    return $numargs;
}

echo numArgs('arg1', 'arg2', 'arg3', 4, 5);

?>

As you can see when you run this code it will print out
5
To get the arguements you can simply use func_get_args(). Lets modify our code a little to see how this works..



<?php

/**
 *
 * Create a HTML list
 *
 * @param variable
 *
 * @return string
 *
 */
function makeList()
{
    /*** begin list ***/
    $list = '<ul>';

    /*** put the args into an array ***/
    $arg_list = func_get_args();

    /*** loop over the array ***/
    foreach($arg_list as $arg)
    {
        $list .= "<li>$arg</li>";
    }
    $list .= '</ul>';

    return $list;
}

/*** call the makeList function with a variable number of args ***/
$list = makeList('the', 'cat', 'sat', 'on', 'the', 'mat');

echo $list;

?>

The above code will produce an ordered list of the arguemnts passed to it, regardless of the number. The output will look like this.