note 31853 deleted from language.references by sniper

Note Submitter: aflorio@grad.inf.puc-rio.br ---- The first code snippet above is printing "Hello from Iteration 5" not only because PHP retains variables after a loop, but because you are assigning by reference ($first_var = &$var). When you do this, $first_var becomes an alias of $var. Whatever changes you make in $var will also change $first_var (they are actually the same). If you do: $first_var = NULL; for ($i=0;$i<5;$i++) { $var = "Hello from Iteration $i"; if (!$i) $first_var = $var; // Assigning by value } echo $first_var; Then you'll get "Hello from Iteration 0". As you can see, it's not only a matter of variable scoping.