In PHP, what is a closure and why does it use the “use” identifier?

Question

I\'m checking out some PHP 5.3.0 features and ran across some code on the site that looks quite funny:

public function getTotal($tax)
{
    $tot         


        

Answer 1

The function () use () {} is like closure for PHP.

Without use, function cannot access parent scope variable

$s = "hello";
$f = function () {
    echo $s;
};

$f(); // Notice: Undefined variable: s

$s = "hello";
$f = function () use ($s) {
    echo $s;
};

$f(); // hello

The use variable's value is from when the function is defined, not when called

$s = "hello";
$f = function () use ($s) {
    echo $s;
};

$s = "how are you?";
$f(); // hello

use variable by-reference with &

$s = "hello";
$f = function () use (&$s) {
    echo $s;
};

$s = "how are you?";
$f(); // how are you?