Re: How to declare Vars in PHP?

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.