For the record, from https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=68475 :
call_user_func($a) is **almost** equivalent to $a(): A "foo::bar" string is OK for call_user_func(), but KO for the pure syntax way. See http://3v4l.org/rbQ4P To me, this looks like a whole in the implementation that should be fixed. But unless it happens, there will always be a valid use case for call_user_func, since it's the only way to keep working with existing code. Nicolas
