asked on

How to compare a function by its value ?!?

Hi,
I was a little inspired by WP (or perhaps not...) so I have some functions on my codes like this which easier me to call it without re-writing echo/print:

function do_yes() {
	echo 'YES';
}

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It seems a great solution so far... until I need to do something like this :

if ( do_yes() == 'write-yes-here-or-whatever' ) { 
// Do something 
echo 'I want THIS';
} else {
// Do other thing 
echo ' - I always receive THIS';
}

// Output: YES - I always receive THIS
// Preferable Output: I want THIS

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Which wont work :( since writing do_yes() anywhere will directly echo YES

Can someone help me so I can do a simple IF-ELSE to the above case without having to modify all my functions?

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Ray Paseur

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Dave Baldwin

A Function should provide you with some advantage over directly coding an operation. For your simple example, creating and calling such a simple function causes more overhead than simply writing "echo 'YES';" each time. And most functions should 'return' a value. Often it's some result that shows whether the function succeeded or not.

Member_2_248744

greetings, you say something about doing several functions so you do not have to write echo, and maybe save some typing, but then you have your echo-out function do_yes() used in an IF comparison -
if ( do_yes() == 'write-yes-here-or-whatever' ) {

which I can not in any way see how that would be useful for you to do, as the specific function do_yes() or do_header() or do_footer() will always echo out just one value, , , a fixed code in the function, and the if( ) test is ONLY meant to be used if there is a changing Variable to be tested as in
if ($changing == 'Special') {
where $changing can have Many different values.
Can you tell us what you want this code to help you do -
if ( do_yes() == 'write-yes-here-or-whatever' ) {
because you already KNOW that do_yes() always echos 'YES', , , so the if test will always be either true or false and never change, making it useless.

what end effect (goal) are you trying to get with -
if ( do_yes() == 'write-yes-here-or-whatever' ) {

? ? ?

tobece

ASKER

Actually this is for a quite old development that neds to be tweaked an I think it will be better if I can only figure out how to apply such function in an IF comparison

And I think Ray provides somehow a better solution since I just need to do a slight modification to such function and then I can safely use them in an IF comparison :)

Here's what I do by the way:

function do_yes($echo=TRUE) {
    if ($echo) echo 'YES';
    return 'YES';
}

$x = do_yes(FALSE); // preparing do_yes() for coming IF comparison :)
if ( $x == 'YES' ) { echo 'MATCH'; } else { echo 'NOT MATCH'; }

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Anyway, thanks all for sharing your thoughts...

tobece

ASKER

Really a nice solution for a little problem that I dont even have a clue for it :)

Ray Paseur

Thanks for the points and thanks for using EE, ~Ray