warning I realised, late enough not to correct it, that I'm using a particular case of wishful thinking - using any php callable in $callable(...) expressions. The reality is abit uglier. We need to use either call_user_func($callable,...); call_user_func_array($callable,...) How I wish php could do that out of the box, especially when it actually does it, just not in the short syntax. Anyone happy to hold my hand to do a php patch for that feature? I'm very unfamiliar with the internals, sorry.

notice As Jared notes in his comment calling functions/methods with $ in a lot of cases you can use $obj->$meth(...) instead of call_user_func($callable,...);. Indeed you can use the following code as part of the remedy list($object,$method) = some_call() $object->$method(...) unfortunately this discriminates against functions, which are lighter to use than their method brethren

and a mention The above two used to live on the top pattern page until I moved them here