I was testing return types with PHP 7.
I've created a simple script to test return types of PHP 7:
<?php
Class Obj {
public function __construct(){
}
public function test(): string { //a string needs to be returned
return "ok";
}
}
function foo(): Obj { //instance of Obj needs to be returned
return new Obj();
}
$o = foo();
echo $o->test(); // output: ok
Now in other programming languages when you specify a return type void
it means you cannot return anything or you will get an error. So I wrote this script:
<?php
function foo(): void {
}
foo();
Now in above script the expected output is nothing. Instead it gives me a Fatal error:
Fatal error: Return value of foo() must be an instance of void, none returned on line 2
My question is (I couldn't find it), in PHP 7 will there be a similar void
type?
A new separate RFC for a void return type has been published, has passed the vote, and was implemented in PHP 7.1.
There is now a void
return type in PHP. :)
Taken from wiki.php.net:
Future Work
Ideas for future work which are out of the scope of this RFC include:
- Allow functions to declare that they do not return anything at all (void in Java and C)
So currently there is no way to declare that you don't return anything.
I don't know what's best in your situation, but I'd probably just go with not declaring the return type for now.
To answer your question whether there will be a void
return type in PHP 7:
There is no guarantee yet, but I think it is very likely that void
or a synonym will be implemented in some way.