note 53539 deleted from language.oop5.overloading by nlopess

Note Submitter: Dasko <dasko at mp dot pl> ---- Usually, if you try to access private variables from outside your class, fatal error will be triggered. But when one of the property overloading methods(__set() or __get()) was defined the class behaves like the requested property wasn't defined at all and overloads it. Example: <?php class MyClass { private $foo; public function __get($name) { echo $name . ' doesn\'t exist...<br />'; } public function __set($name, $value) { echo 'Cannot set ' . $name . '. The requested property doesn\'t exist...<br />'; } } // class' instance $obj = new MyClass; // trying to access foo - __get() is called echo $obj->foo; // trying to set foo - __set() is called $obj->foo = 'newValue'; ?> The code won't trigger any error. It simply behaves like MyClass::$foo really doesn't exist. Notice, that the feature doesn't work with method overloading - accessing private method from outside the class will cause Fatal Error, even if the __call() method was defined. The feature was tested on PHP 5.1-dev.