[wp-hackers] echo and return

[Owen Winkler]

This discussion is insanity.  Assuming that there is a call for a change
at all, here's my pithy suggestion:

Make template functions always echo by default.  The first function
parameter is either a querystring or an array.  The second function
parameter optionally turns off the echo.  Template functions always
return the value they would have echoed/did echo.

Benefits:
Breaks less legacy code.
Arrays as parameters, benefits as mentioned in previous post.
Querystrings still work for functions that already call with them.

Code to accomplish this:

function fix_params($params, $defaults = array())
{
	if(!is_array($params)) {
		parse_str($params, $ary);
		return array_merge($defaults, $ary);
	}
	return array_merge($defaults, $params);
}

// This is a sample template function
function the_something($params, $doecho = true) {
	$params = fix_params($params, array('default' => 'setting'));
	...
	if($doecho) echo $result;
	return $result;
}

By the way, David, that's a pretty neat function you wrote to synth the
getters.

Owen