programming-for-dummies

Creating Functions 505
If you don’t know how many times you need to repeat commands, use a
WHILE loop, which looks like this:
Book V
Chapter 4
while (condition) {
Command;
}
If the condition is True, the loop runs at least once. If this condition is
False, the loop doesn’t run.
PHP
Somewhere inside a WHILE loop, you must have a command that can change
the condition from True to False; otherwise the loop will never end and
your program will appear to hang or freeze.
Creating Functions
To break up programming problems, you can create subprograms that solve
a specific task. Such subprograms are functions. The format of a typical function
looks like this:
function functionname (Parameter list)
{
Commands;
return $value;
}
The two parts of a PHP function are
Parameter list: Defines any data that the function needs to work. If the
function doesn’t need to accept any values, the parameter list can be
empty.
Return: Defines a value to return.
If a function doesn’t return a value or accept any parameters, it might look
like this:
function myfunction ()
{
Command;
}