$arr_x = null;
if((!empty($str_x)) AND ((is_array($str_x) OR is_numeric($str_x)) {
$arr_x = (((is_array($str_x)) ? $str_x : explode('|', $str_x));
}

Had a class of 2.5 k lines of crap like this ....

Brain needs wipe. Beer solution is!

Me Yoda is!

Cool. You just gave me a headache. Thank you.

This code is a weapon impairing anyone's attempting to read it sanity. Why would you post it without a disclaimer? Why? WHY???

Fuck it hurts

*lunatic giggles*

I really don't know... But I Hope the author of such code never get's access to an keyboard again.

Parentheses, Types, Naming.... Everythings fucked up.

PHP MD and PHP CS with highlighting..... Well editor looked like a fucking blow torch

Do you work with my coworker? I cry every time I see this kind of nonsense.

And they are bald enough to cry 'everyone needs 2yrs experience to apply, how do I get it then?' and 'free internship is nonsense, it's just a way to get more working hands for free'

mmmyyyyeeeaaaaahhhhhhhh...... Rriiiigghhhtt....

If you ever have to make these kind of checks there's something seriously wrong with the design

That's not a php problem, that's a smelly problem

Just saying

Valium indeed 🤢

@rant1ng Was Nothing against PHP... Whoever wrote this thought that PHP's weak typing meant "I can just put whateva variable type the fuck I want wherever I want it"....

As in this case - stuffing an array or string in a function and then "misusing" null to detect whether the array was initialized… Serious braindamage. Seems like he wanted to give hints by appling str | arr as an prefix… Which made it only worse...
Simple (PHP 7.2)
public function foo(array $bla) :array
{
if (empty($bla)) {
return array();
}
….
}

And fixed. I really don't know why some people think that PHP's weak typing translates to "I can Change the variable type whenever I want and ambigous functions are completely okay".... Really… I don't have a fucking clue. But in this legacy Project and database there is really of lot of such shit…

(fixed a few typos, still running low on caffeine)

@IntrusionCM

Strict types in PHP are wonderful. At some point you might not know what is in a variable — usually where user input is involved.

In my opinion, you should have a bunch of "Validator" classes. That's where some empty/array/string/etc checks are allowed.

Anywhere else, strict types, and type hints on all parameters and return types should be mandatory in your code.

@IntrusionCM

I knew all of that could be fixed simply and elegantly, nice solution man.

would you declare strict_types or not?

@rant1ng I would certainly use strict types (and type hints) for all new classes, and try to rewrite old classes so they can handle the restriction.

@rant1g Depends. Small projects with a total number of files < 500 maybe. Above it depends on the age of the project. If it was written before PHP 5.4 then no.

Reason is that PHP 5.4 removed quite a lot of headache cases (Reference misusage, magic quotes and so on) and PHP 5.3 removed super globals.

A lot of these cases can make even small refactorings troublesome and very frustrating.

For new projects - yes.

@IntrusionCM If your project is written in PHP 5.x, drop everything and get it working on PHP 7.x.

Lol.

I think my company would be very glad if u payed us for refactorings....

Seriously, that's not possible most of the time as the customer does not pay for it.