No, it is not possible (before PHP 8.0): if you want to pass the third parameter, you have to pass the second one. And named parameters are not possible either.
A “solution” would be to use only one parameter, an array, and always pass it… But don’t always define everything in it.
For instance :
function foo($params) {
var_dump($params);
}
And calling it this way : (Key / value array)
foo([
'a' => 'hello',
]);
foo([
'a' => 'hello',
'c' => 'glop',
]);
foo([
'a' => 'hello',
'test' => 'another one',
]);
Will get you this output :
array
'a' => string 'hello' (length=5)
array
'a' => string 'hello' (length=5)
'c' => string 'glop' (length=4)
array
'a' => string 'hello' (length=5)
'test' => string 'another one' (length=11)
But I don’t really like this solution :
- You will lose the phpdoc
- Your IDE will not be able to provide any hint anymore… Which is bad
So I’d go with this only in very specific cases — for functions with lots of optional parameters, for instance…