Posted by lawrence k on 07/06/07 21:35

I'm working in PHP 4. Even if a parameter is mandatory, I nearly
always give it a default value of "false". Then I print an error
message if someone who is calling my function forgot the mandatory
parameter:

function outputHtmlToShowFile($fileName=false) {
if ($fileName) {
// code goes here
} else {
echo "In outputHtmlToShowAFile() the code expected the first
parameter to be a file name, but instead the value was false";
}
}

How do others handle default parameter values?

I've been avoiding this:

function outputHtmlToShowFile($fileName) { }

because if I do this and someone forgets to pass a file name to the
function, then the PHP parser issues an error. I've been assuming
that relying on the PHP parser to write my error messages for me is
unprofessional. Does anyone else feel that way?

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