Colon(ectomy)

This is not urgent, I have fixed the problem, but I don't know why it was having a problem in the first place and now its eating at me... I had a class, and in the variable declarations, I had this line... var $xdate = date(ymd) ; Note the ";"..... well, when I went to use the script, it told me that there was NO COLON. But, when I re-wrote the statement as such... var $xdate ; CONSTRUCTOR FUNCTION() { $this->xdate = date (ymd) ; ... ... ... } It works fine.... Why is this. thanks, Dallas K.