Native

A feature is called ‘native’ or ‘built-in’ when it is part of the standard installation of PHP. For example, . (dot operator) or the stdClass class are native to PHP.

On the other hand, a feature is custom : that is, when defined by the developer or a PHP extension.

<?php

// This is a native function
$s = strtolower($s);

// This is not a native function : it comes from an extension
$rar_arch = RarArchive::open('latest_winrar.rar');


?>

See also The 100 PHP functions in 2022