Re: Question about `global` variable declaration

On Sat, Sep 21, 2019 at 6:18 PM Kosit Supanyo <webdevxp.com@gmail.com> wrote: > Unlike var, public, static and others - 'global' is not a declaration of >> class structure, but a way to access global variables. > > > I know it is not and I think almost everyone knows that. As I said, I came > up with this by comparing to other declarations syntactically not > functionally, it is inconsistent in that way. I don't know how many PHP > developers out there know global can take variable variables > but I my > guess is, very very little because there's no information about this > behavior of global in PHP manual > https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.scope.php and > I'd never > seen those forms of global in any projects/articles before. > I think you're raising two separate points: 1. The global statement is inconsistent with other similar statements. 2. It's not widely used and we should consider deprecating this behavior. Re: #1 - even though it may look similar, the global statement is fundamentally different from public/private/static and friends. It's not really a declaration - it's like Nikita said is a simple equivalent for writing $foo = &$GLOBALS['foo'] - and as such, is a runtime statement as opposed to a compile-time declaration like the others. So despite the superficial similarities, the differences between the two justify different behavior/allowed syntax. Re: #2 - the fact it's not documented is a fair point - but I'm not sure that in itself is cause for anything other than perhaps adding a quick note in the docs. People familiar with PHP's variable-variables functionality ( https://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.variable.php) will not find this behavior as inconsistent or otherwise surprising, I think. It does appear to be mentioned in some places (e.g. the O'Reilly PHP Cookbook, https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/php-cookbook/1565926811/ch06s12.html). I doubt there'll be a big impact if we were to deprecate this behavior - it doesn't appear very mainstream (and there's a simple workaround available through $GLOBALS) - but I don't see any gain to be had either. Zeev