What is the Purpose of the \'Splat\' Operator (...) in PHP?

Unveiling PHP's Mysterious Dots (...)

Encountering three dots during Magento 2 installation can raise concerns. Upon investigation, this seemingly cryptic operator (...) may appear in code resembling:

return new $type(...array_values($args));

This enigmatic operator has a specific meaning within PHP, as revealed by the "splat" operator from other languages. It enables functions to accept a variable number of arguments.

As illustrated in the following example:

function concatenate($transform, ...$strings) {
    $string = '';
    foreach($strings as $piece) {
       $string .= $piece;
    }
    return($transform($string));  
 }

echo concatenate("strtoupper", "I'd ", "like ", 4 + 2, " apples");

This function prints "I'D LIKE 6 APPLES."

The "..." in the function declaration enables passing two or more arguments, with all subsequent ones being collected into an array ($strings).

This operator provides flexibility in function design, allowing them to accept a variable number of arguments without explicitly specifying each one in the declaration.

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