简单的例子

<?php
echo '#start main# ';
function a(){
    echo '{start[';
    for($i=1; $i<=9; $i++)
        yield $i;
    echo ']end} ';
}
foreach(a() as $v)
    echo $v.',';
echo '#end main#';
?>

输出

#start main# {start[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,]end} #end main#

先进的例子

<?php
echo '#start main# ';
function a(){
    echo '{start[';
    for($i=1; $i<=9; $i++)
        yield $i;
    echo ']end} ';
}
foreach(a() as $k => $v){
    if($k === 5)
        break;
    echo $k.'=>'.$v.',';
}
echo '#end main#';
?>

输出

#start main# {start[0=>1,1=>2,2=>3,3=>4,4=>5,#end main#

下面的代码说明了如何使用生成器在完成之前返回一个结果，而不像传统的非生成器方法在完整迭代之后返回一个完整的数组。使用下面的生成器，值在准备就绪时返回，不需要等待数组被完全填充:

<?php 

function sleepiterate($length) {
    for ($i=0; $i < $length; $i++) {
        sleep(2);
        yield $i;
    }
}

foreach (sleepiterate(5) as $i) {
    echo $i, PHP_EOL;
}

一个值得在此讨论的有趣方面是参照让步。每次我们需要改变一个形参以使其反映在函数外部时，我们必须通过引用传递这个形参。要将此应用于生成器，只需在生成器的名称和迭代中使用的变量前加上&:

 <?php 
 /**
 * Yields by reference.
 * @param int $from
 */
function &counter($from) {
    while ($from > 0) {
        yield $from;
    }
}

foreach (counter(100) as &$value) {
    $value--;
    echo $value . '...';
}

// Output: 99...98...97...96...95...

上面的例子展示了在foreach循环中改变迭代值如何改变生成器中的$from变量。这是因为由于生成器名称前有&号，$from是通过引用产生的。正因为如此，foreach循环中的$value变量是生成器函数中$from变量的引用。

yield关键字用于定义PHP 5.5中的“生成器”。 好的，那么什么是发电机?

从php.net:

Generators provide an easy way to implement simple iterators without the overhead or complexity of implementing a class that implements the Iterator interface. A generator allows you to write code that uses foreach to iterate over a set of data without needing to build an array in memory, which may cause you to exceed a memory limit, or require a considerable amount of processing time to generate. Instead, you can write a generator function, which is the same as a normal function, except that instead of returning once, a generator can yield as many times as it needs to in order to provide the values to be iterated over.

从这里开始:发电机=发电机，其他函数(只是一个简单的函数)=函数。

因此，它们在以下情况下很有用:

you need to do things simple (or simple things); generator is really much simplier then implementing the Iterator interface. other hand is, ofcource, that generators are less functional. compare them. you need to generate BIG amounts of data - saving memory; actually to save memory we can just generate needed data via functions for every loop iteration, and after iteration utilize garbage. so here main points is - clear code and probably performance. see what is better for your needs. you need to generate sequence, which depends on intermediate values; this is extending of the previous thought. generators can make things easier in comparison with functions. check Fibonacci example, and try to make sequence without generator. Also generators can work faster is this case, at least because of storing intermediate values in local variables; you need to improve performance. they can work faster then functions in some cases (see previous benefit);

没有一个答案给出了使用由非数字成员填充的大型数组的具体示例。下面是一个例子，在一个大的.txt文件(在我的用例中是262MB)上使用由explosion()生成的数组:

<?php

ini_set('memory_limit','1000M');

echo "Starting memory usage: " . memory_get_usage() . "<br>";

$path = './file.txt';
$content = file_get_contents($path);

foreach(explode("\n", $content) as $ex) {
    $ex = trim($ex);
}

echo "Final memory usage: " . memory_get_usage();

输出结果是:

Starting memory usage: 415160
Final memory usage: 270948256

现在将其与类似的脚本进行比较，使用yield关键字:

<?php

ini_set('memory_limit','1000M');

echo "Starting memory usage: " . memory_get_usage() . "<br>";

function x() {
    $path = './file.txt';
    $content = file_get_contents($path);
    foreach(explode("\n", $content) as $x) {
        yield $x;
    }
}

foreach(x() as $ex) {
    $ex = trim($ex);
}

echo "Final memory usage: " . memory_get_usage();

这个脚本的输出是:

Starting memory usage: 415152
Final memory usage: 415616

显然，内存使用节省相当大(ΔMemoryUsage -----> ~270.5 MB在第一个示例中，~450B在第二个示例中)。

在实现PHP IteratorAggregate接口时，yield关键字将很有用。查看文档，有几个使用ArrayIterator或yield的例子。

另一个例子是php-ds/polyfill repo: https://github.com/php-ds/polyfill/blob/e52796c50aac6e6cfa6a0e8182943027bacbe187/src/Traits/GenericSequence.php#L359

这个想法类似于下面的例子:

class Collection implements \IteratorAggregate
{
    private $array = [];

    public function push(...$values)
    {
        array_push($this->array, ...$values);
    }

    public function getIterator()
    {
        foreach ($this->array as $value) {
            yield $value;
        }
    }
}

$collection = new Collection();
$collection->push('apple', 'orange', 'banana');

foreach ($collection as $key => $value) {
    echo sprintf("[%s] => %s\n", $key, $value);
}

输出:

[0] => apple
[1] => orange
[2] => banana