Michael got a customer call, from a PHP system his company had put together four years ago. He pulled up the code, which thankfully was actually up to date in source control, and tried to get a grasp of what the system does.

There, he discovered a… unique way to define functions in PHP:

if(!function_exists("GetFileAsString")){
        function GetFileAsString($FileName){
                $Contents = "";
                if(file_exists($FileName)){
                        $Contents = file_get_contents($FileName);
                }
                return $Contents;
        }
}
if(!function_exists("RemoveEmptyArrayValuesAndDuplicates")){
        function RemoveEmptyArrayValuesAndDuplicates($ArrayName){
                foreach( $ArrayName as $Key => $Value ) {
                        if( empty( $ArrayName[ $Key ] ) )
                   unset( $ArrayName[ $Key ] );
                }
                $ArrayName = array_unique($ArrayName);
                $ReIndexedArray = array();
                $ReIndexedArray = array_values($ArrayName);
                return $ReIndexedArray;
        }
}

Before we talk about the function_exists nonsense, lets comment on the functions themselves: theyre both unnecessary. file_get_contents returns a false-y value that gets converted to an empty string if you ever treat it as a string , which is exactly the same thing that GetFileAsString does. The replacement for RemoveEmptyArrayValuesAndDuplicates could also be much simpler: array_values(array_unique(array_filter($rawArray)));. Thats still complex enough it could merit its own function, but without the loop, its far easier to understand.

Neither of these functions needs to exist, which is why, perhaps, theyre conditional. I can only guess about how these came to be, but heres my guess:

Once upon a time, in the Dark Times, many developers were working on the project. They worked with no best-practices, no project organization, no communication, and no thought. Each of them gradually built up a library of include files, that carried with it their own… unique solution to common problems. It became spaghetti, and then eventually a forest, and eventually, in the twisted morass of code, Sallybobs GetFileAsString conflicted with Joebobs GetFileAsString. The project teetered on the edge of failure… so someone tried to fix it, by decreeing every utility function needed this kind of guard.

Ive seen PHP projects go down this path, though never quite to this conclusion.

https://thedailywtf.com/articles/questioning-existence