Posted by burgermeister01@gmail.com on 08/24/07 00:41

First, let me say that this question is a rather general programming
question, but the context is PHP, so I figured this group would have
the most relevant insight.

Anyways, this is also more of an opinion based question than one
seeking a definite answer. Recently, while maintaining a rather large
system. I needed to add an array class member to an object. It was
exactly the same as another class member, except that one array stored
regular products, and the other stored free promotional products. As
such, I needed a way to add products to the new, free array. Since all
the logic was the same between the two arrays aside from the price, I
had a few different options to do this. I'm interested in polling
which way some of the group members feel would have been the best.
Naturally these are abbreviated versions of what I envisioned as
possible solutions.
#1.
public function addArrayA($object){
//logic
$a[] = $object;
}

public function addArrayB($object){
//same logic
$b[] = $object;
}


#2. (These next two are arranged as such, because the class using
these functions is included in many script files,
all of which I may not be aware of, so there would have to be some
default value for the array that was always used
before this new array was needed)
public function addArray($object, $free = NULL){
//logic
if(!$free){
$a[] = $object;
}else{
$b[] = $object;
}
}

or

#3
public function addArray($object, $arr = "a"){
//logic
$$arr[] = $object;
}



I ended up going with option number 1, because I felt that despite the
inefficient, redundant code it would later be more readable to other
programmers that might work on the project. Additionally, I didn't
feel wholly comfortable with default variables being the only
difference between a full price product and a free product. Thoughts?

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