Posted by Jon M. on 05/05/05 13:17

OK, thanks everyone.



(BTW -I actually meant to say 'var $varName;' in PHP and 'var varName;' in
JavaScript -doh!)



Anyway, my question has been thoroughly answered, and I completely
understand now.



I did try the "var $varName;" outside a class, just to see what happened,
and found out it does indeed throw a parse error, so I'll just use a comment
as Mr. Rasmus suggested. I wonder why "Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL from Novice
to Professional by W. Jason Gilmore" says to declare them? I guess he just
meant by assigning a value like: $varName = Null or something. I just have
to get used to this new way of "declaring" -lol.



And thanks especially Ryan. That is a very informational answer, and gives
me a much deeper insight into why PHP doesn't allow an actual definition,
than any other resource/explanation I have ever seen! Thank you VERY much
for taking the time to write that, I am the kind of person who wants to
completely understand a subject (not just "how", but, "why" as well), and
now I completely understand this particular part of PHP.



-Jon






"Ryan Faricy" <ryan@faricy.net> wrote in message
news:20050505084252.68291.qmail@lists.php.net...
>
> "Jon M." <dsak8330225@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:20050505014112.37150.qmail@lists.php.net...
>>I know it's not necessary, but I still want to know how.
>>
>>
>> I know in JavaScript, that you declare vars like so:
>>
>> var = variableName;
>>
>> So I'm assuming that in PHP you do it like this:
>>
>> var = $variableName;
>>
>> But there doesn't seem to be a single shred of documentation on PHP.net
>> (or in ANY book) that covers this. All they say is that it's good
>> practice, but not necessary. Then they always skip telling you how.
>>
>> I always like to declare vars since it helps me keep track of the vars I
>> will be using, and I just like to do things right.
>>
>> So am I right about how you do it? "Yes", "No", example please??
>>
>>
>> -Jon
>
> It is good practice to define your variables (i.e., set them to 0, or
> empty, etc) at the beginning of a script, for security and reliability
> reasons.
>
> With PHP however, there technically is no definition of variables as in
> other languages such as Java or BASIC. To define a variable in PHP simply
> requires a $variableName = ''; or $variableName = 0; or $variableName =
> empty; etc etc. A variable is defined as soon as a value is set for it,
> therefore to define a variable, simply give it a value.

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