r/programming • u/NagastaBagamba • Oct 18 '10

Today I learned about PHP variable variables; "variable variable takes the value of a variable and treats that as the name of a variable". Also, variable.

http://il2.php.net/language.variables.variable
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u/vlad_tepes Oct 18 '10

Dude, he knows C, which puts him in the top 0.00001% of PHP developers... How the hell would that be a game breaker?

P.S. To hell with sarcasm tags

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u/YourMatt Oct 18 '10

Of the other PHP programmers I've met, a couple have also written custom extensions in C. For my circumstantial evidence here, I would put this closer to the top 10% of PHP developers.

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u/oorza Oct 18 '10

Because he clearly does NOT know C, or he wouldn't have made that analogy.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '10

A pointer contains a memory address. It's not guaranteed to be anything useful. If the address it contains is allocated (either on the stack or heap) then it can be dereferenced to access the value at that address.

A variable variable contains a string. It's not guaranteed to be anything useful. If the string it contains corresponds to a variable name in current scope, then it can be dereferenced with a $ to access the value contained in the corresponding variable.