PHP: [MUST] know methods

This language have bunch of methods, do you guys any favorites? share it for me, and what is it for? thanx

 

I guess you guys are not calling it a method, but a function...?

 

methods are functions contained inside classes / objects and functions are procedural functions.

I'm not sure I have a favourite function or class, there are millions, too many :S

 

I'm sure that there's no way you can memorize all millions of them right? so probably there are some of them that you use most? :-/

 

well I wouldn't like to write a big list, but if I'm writing an application I can normally think of two or three ways of doing whatever I'm trying to do.

I suppose I can think of a list of preferences for programming,

I'll use substr over preg_match|replace
mysql_connect over mysql_pconnect
preg_match over ereg
split over explode
arrays over strings
classes over procedural
fopen|read|write|close over file_get|put_contents ( not because of speed but control over the process )
curl over sockets
fsockopen over sockets
windows program over php script - oh yes !!
mysql_fetch_assoc over mysql_result

you find when you have been doing it for a while most common functions are at the front of your brain

 

isset() // if you're unsure of something
instanceof // not a function, but it makes the code look cooler

 

Well not a native PHP function but people seem to always think is_int checks for integer on post values and thing of that nature. So here is a simple isInt function that can do integer checks on php strings (post,get,cookie ect.)

function isInt($value)
{
       return (is_numeric($value) ? intval($value) == $value : false);	
}

PHP:

 

Don't really have a favorite...

empty() is useful sometimes.