What would be a good noop for PhP

Question

Sometimes I do not want to do anything.

I just want to have a statement so I can put break point.

In c and objective-c we have while (false);

Say I want to break a function

-(void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated
{

    [super viewDidAppear:animated];
    self.navigationItem.leftBarButtonItem=nil;
    self.navigationItem.rightBarButtonItem=nil;


    [[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter]addObserver:self selector:@selector(updateDisplays) name: NotificationUpdateArroworLocation object:nil];

    PO(self.tableView.indexPathForSelectedRow);
    while(false);//I put break point here so program stop here.
}

In .net we have donothing (Not sure Did I make that up?).

What should we use in PhP?

Well, I suppose I can put in regular places. Sometimes I want more control of where the breakpoint is. Check the objective-c code I wrote. I could do break point at PO(self.tableview.indexPathforSelectedRow). However, I prefer to break one line after it. Nah I use noop. Which is while(false); — user4234, Jan 09 '13 at 09:04
@skurton, I didn't think about it. I think in PhP while(false) should be followed by {} or something. — user4234, Jan 09 '13 at 09:05
@skurton if you're sure that work it can be the answer. You can turn that into an answer. I'll check that once I program in PhP again. — user4234, Jan 09 '13 at 09:05
Why should there be a need for a dummy function? If you have a decent IDE you should be able to put the breakpoint on the closing curly bracket. — pritaeas, Jan 09 '13 at 09:09
@kmkapla - what's the problem with that? You can debug PHP just as easily as any other language. — SDC, Jan 09 '13 at 09:14
@SDC It’s a long time since I last did some serious PHP. What debugger exists? I will be happy to try them. — kmkaplan, Jan 09 '13 at 09:17
I used zend. Yea I sometimes try the breakpoint at closing curly bracket not sure where it really breaks. — user4234, Jan 09 '13 at 09:18
@kmkaplan - Zend provide a debugger, but [xDebug](http://www.xdebug.org/) is the more commonly used one. I certainly wouldn't contemplate doing any serious dev work without a debugger and all the other standard testing tools. — SDC, Jan 09 '13 at 09:34
This doesn't answer the full question (about noop) but for setting breakpoints where there isn't a line suitable to attach one to, I usually use `xdebug_break()` — Tomeh, Aug 01 '18 at 12:44
What do you want to achieve with that? You can put a breakpoint on any line — Nico Haase, Dec 17 '21 at 20:39

score 15 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 09 '13 at 09:15

15

You can use same trick and a lot of other features:

<?php
    while (false);
    // or empty output
    echo '';
    // or any expression without side effects
    5 + 5;

If you use XDebug, you can call xdebug_break() function directly in any place.

answered Jan 09 '13 at 09:15

Alex

633
1
5
10

score 11 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 22 '17 at 17:29

Would

assert(true);

be enough to attach a breakpoint to?

For the dev environment, assertions should be compiled and executed. For the prod environment, assertions should probably not be compiled nor executed. So you can leave them in. Which is useful!

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.assert.php

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 17 '21 at 20:30

2

For PHP I use semicolon with a comment just to make it more explicit:

; // noop

wikipedia says a lone semicolon in its own line was a classic way of doing it in C as well.

answered Dec 17 '21 at 20:30

jerome

51
3

Please add some explanation to your answer by editing it. Would XDebug hold at this line if you put a breakpoint on it? – Nico Haase Dec 17 '21 at 20:39

What would be a good noop for PhP

3 Answers3