What's __halt_compiler in PHP for?

Question

From the manual:

void __halt_compiler ( void )

This function halts the execution of the compiler. This can be useful to embe

Answer 1

Previously, The ClassGenerator in the PhpSpec unit testing library provided a good example of using __halt_compiler(), which the PHP class contains a code template for a PHP class.

They've recently update to read the template from a seperate file, but initially the getTemplate() method will attempt to read the PHP code template provided in the file that follows the __halt_compiler() call. This avoids the token from getting parsed.

/**
 * The Class Generator is responsible for generating the classes from a resource
 * in the appropriate folder using the template provided
 */
class ClassGenerator
{
    //...

    /**
     * @return string
     */
    protected function getTemplate()
    {
        return file_get_contents(__FILE__, null, null, __COMPILER_HALT_OFFSET__);
    }
}
__halt_compiler();