After programming in php for 10+ years, I had never heard of the filter syntax. Given it’s pretty trivial to implement what filter is doing in procedural code,

After programming in php for 10+ years, I had never heard of the filter syntax. Given it’s pretty trivial to implement what filter is doing in procedural code, it doesn’t seem like the syntax sugar is worth it. Any idea of the motivation for supporting building conversion chains this way and why the complexity in the base langue was deemed worth it?