note 58325 deleted from language.variables.scope by danbrown

Note Submitter: zapakh at yahoo dot com ---- Addendum to the post by tc underline at gmx TLD ch, on unsetting global variables from inside functions: If setting to null is not a suitable substitute for unset() in your application, you can unset the global variable's entry in the $GLOBALS superglobal. <?php function testc() { global $a; echo " inner testc: $a\n"; unset($GLOBALS['a']); echo " inner testc: $a\n"; } $a = 5678; echo "<pre>"; echo "outer: $a\n"; testc(); echo "outer: $a\n"; echo "</pre>\n"; ?> /***** Output: outer: 5678 inner testc: 5678 inner testc: 5678 outer: ******/ If the behavior of testc (or testa or testb, for that matter) seems surprising, consider that the use of the 'global' keyword simply performs an assignment by reference. In other words, <?php global $a; //these two lines $a =& $GLOBALS['a']; //are equivalent. ?> If you've read http://php.net/references , then everything behaves as you'd expect.