...whereas in PHP there’s a setting in php.ini with a Hebrew name that will cause the function to spin-lock, pegging your CPU to 100% until it does catch fire,

...whereas in PHP there’s a setting in php.ini with a Hebrew name that will cause the function to spin-lock, pegging your CPU to 100% until it does catch fire, so that you can be sure it’ll always return a value. And it defaults to true.