title: PHP method chaining benefits?
body: <p>Still on the PHP-OOP training wheels, this question may belong on <a href="http://failblog.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">failblog.org</a>. =)</p>
  
  <p>What are the benefits of method chaining in PHP?</p>
  
  <p>I'm not sure if this is important, but I'll be calling my method statically. e.g.</p>
  
  <pre><code>$foo = Bar::get('sysop')-&gt;set('admin')-&gt;render();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>From what I've read, any method which returns <code>$this</code> is allowed to be chained. I just learned this is new in PHP5. Seems to me there may be speed benefits if I don't have to instantiate a whole new object (calling it statically) and just select the few methods I need from the class?</p>
  
  <p>Do I have that right?</p>