Pro PHP Programming

C H A P T E R  5

Cutting Edge

This chapter will introduce the new features of PHP 5.3. These new features include name spaces, closures, the new text format known as nowdoc, and the goto statement. This final innovation is sort of a blast from the past, still as much despised as it was when the first fully procedural languages, such as Pascal, started to gain popularity among programmers. Regular use of the goto statement is still very much frowned upon; one could even argue that its use is a deadly sin among programmers. The controversy was started by the famous paper “Go To Statement Considered Harmful” (Edsger Dijkstra, 1968), and the goto statement has been considered suspect ever since. Having an option, however, is never bad. Programming ...