PHP replace wildcards (%s, %d) in string with vars

Question

I have translate function t($var);

function t($word) {
    return $this->words[$word];
}

where $this->words is

Answer 1

I've seen people recommend using sprintf but personally I'd recommend using vsprintf: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.vsprintf.php

function t($word, $vars = array()) {
  return vsprintf($this->words[$word], $vars);
}

This allows you to pass in an array of variables instead of passing them in as separate parameters.

Generally translate functions will first check for a translation and if not found just return the lookup key.

function t($word, $vars = array()) {
  return isset($this->words[$word]) ? vsprintf($this->words[$word], $vars) : $word;
}