Coalesce function for PHP?

First hit for "php coalesce" on google.

function coalesce() {
  $args = func_get_args();
  foreach ($args as $arg) {
    if (!empty($arg)) {
      return $arg;
    }
  }
  return NULL;
}

http://drupial.com/content/php-coalesce

PHP 7 introduced a real coalesce operator:

echo $_GET['doesNotExist'] ?? 'fallback'; // prints 'fallback'

If the value before the ?? does not exists or is null the value after the ?? is taken.

The improvement over the mentioned ?: operator is, that the ?? also handles undefined variables without throwing an E_NOTICE.

I really like the ?: operator. Unfortunately, it is not yet implemented on my production environment. So I use the equivalent of this:

function coalesce() {
  return array_shift(array_filter(func_get_args()));
}

There is a new operator in php 5.3 which does this: ?:

// A
echo 'A' ?: 'B';

// B
echo '' ?: 'B';

// B
echo false ?: 'B';

// B
echo null ?: 'B';

Source: http://www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php#5.3.0

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