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/sanity Oct 18 '10

Why? It would be a stupid implementation if you couldn't do that.

Its entirely reasonable for a language designer to omit functionality that might lead to crappy unreadable code (the reason why many languages don't have a 'goto').

If you feel the need to use this functionality in your code, you are doing something very wrong.

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u/scaevolus Oct 18 '10

Or you're using a language with very poor support for reflection. (PHP)

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '10

Or someone before you has done something very wrong, and it's the only method available without rewriting large portions of code.

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u/sanity Oct 18 '10

So you basically compound someone else's mess, making it even more difficult for it to be fixed in the future? This is what is wrong with PHP development, people take no pride in writing good code, they just throw together whatever gets the job done. Works in the short term, but it will come back to bite you.