Function pointers, if you are a C person, Funs, if you are an Erlang cat, Procs or lambdas for Ruby, delegates in C#, lambdas in my beloved Python is what I am talking about.
PHP too, supports this, but in a completely straight forward way.
take the following PHP code:
function iMRichBitch() { compute48thMersennePrime(); }
you can simply refer to pass around a reference (or pointer) to 'iMRichBitch' using a string by the same name. Of course, when the function is to be invoked, you simply can say:
$func = 'iMRichBitch';
$func();
So this begs the question, "if I have function pointers", then I ought to use those instead of case statements and maybe even nested conditionals, right?" The answer is a big 'YES'.
so instead of this:
switch($conditional) { case 1: do1(); break; case 2: do2(); break; default: break; }
you might think about doing this (with a little defensive code for garnishment):
$conditional();