PHP - Break after return?

It will run just once, stop looping, and exit from the function/method.

It could be argued though that this is bad style. It is very easy to overlook that return later, which is bad for debugging and maintenance.

Using break might be cleaner:

for($i = 0; $i < 5; $i ++) {    if($var[$i] === '')     { set_some_condition;        break;     }}if (some_condition) return;

Update:

PHP 7 requires a return. A break; is not needed because the loop ends on return.

A break; is usually used in a switch or loop whenever you have found your needed item.

Example:

$items = ['a' , 'b' , 'c']; foreach($items as $item) {    if($item == 'a')    {       return true; // the foreach will stop once 'a' is found and returns true.    }      return false; // if 'a' is not found, the foreach will return false.}

or:

$items = ['a' , 'b' , 'c'];     foreach($items as $item){    return $item == 'a'; // if 'a' is found, true is returned. Otherwise false.}

If you use return, your function (or entire script) will return - all code after that won't be executed. So to answer your question: a break is not required here. However, if the break was not commented out here, the loop would have stopped after one iteration. That's because your if statement doesn't use braces ({ ... }) so it only covers the return statement (in other words: the break in your example is always executed).