public $X V.S. var $X

[Y.P.Y]

________________________________

[techgnome]

scope. var is local scope. public is, well, public.

-tg

[dclamp]

i have never seen 'var' used in PHP. Can you show me where you have seen it?

i know var is used in Javascript to define a string

[Y.P.Y]

MyBB database class(MySQL). and...

[techgnome]

@dclamp - well, how else do you define a local variable in PHP? That's the way Iv'e always done it....

-tg

[visualAd]

Because PHP is typeless, all variables are defined when they are first used; variables are given the type of the value they are assigned. Therefore in order to declare an integer you would use:

$i = 1; 

There are instances where it is useful to declare the presence of a variable which may or may not be used. The var keyword is used to declare class variables only and was introduced in PHP 4.

class Foo {
    var $myProperty;

    function Foo()
    {
        $this->myProperty = 'hello';
    }
} 

Before a declared class variable is used it is assigned a null value. In PHP 5 var was superseded by the class visibility modifiers (public / private and protected). var can still be used in PHP 5 but it is generally considered better practice to use either public, private or protected. Var will likely also be removed in PHP 6.

class Foo {
    private $myProperty;

    public function __construct()
    {
        $this->myProperty = 'hello';
    }
} 

The visibility modifiers can also be applied to class methods in PHP 5 too. PHP is becoming more of a typed language since the introduction of the PHP 5 object model which also introduced type hinting to force function arguments to be of a particular object type.