Everything

php

dollars and sense.

php.internals

Michael Hawley

22 years ago

Why must variable names begin with $?  I can't see any
real reason, except when signalling a replacement within
a string (e.g., "... $var ...").  The language would be less
cumbersome if the dollar was optional otherwise.

Mike

Andrei Zmievski

22 years ago

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Michael Hawley wrote:

> Why must variable names begin with $?  I can't see any
> real reason, except when signalling a replacement within
> a string (e.g., "... $var ...").  The language would be less
> cumbersome if the dollar was optional otherwise.

You are about 9 years late to the party.

-Andrei

"Claiming Java is easier than C++ is like
saying that K2 is shorter than Everest."
-- Larry O'Brien (editor, Software Development)

Brad LaFountain

22 years ago

hahahhaha

--- Andrei Zmievski <andrei@gravitonic.com> wrote:

> On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Michael Hawley wrote:
> > Why must variable names begin with $?  I can't see any
> > real reason, except when signalling a replacement within
> > a string (e.g., "... $var ...").  The language would be less
> > cumbersome if the dollar was optional otherwise.
>
> You are about 9 years late to the party.
>
> -Andrei
>
> "Claiming Java is easier than C++ is like
>  saying that K2 is shorter than Everest."
>  -- Larry O'Brien (editor, Software Development)
>
> --
> PHP Internals - PHP Runtime Development Mailing List
> To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
>

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Ken Tossell

22 years ago

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004, Michael Hawley wrote:

> Why must variable names begin with $?  I can't see any
> real reason, except when signalling a replacement within
> a string (e.g., "... $var ...").  The language would be less
> cumbersome if the dollar was optional otherwise.

Two letters: HA

But to answer your question based on current PHP, non-prefixed variables
would conflict with define()d constants, which appear as: $foo =
'abc'.bar;

Ken

ps: sorry, but... heh...
pps: don't use "foo $bar blah" -- use 'foo ' . $bar . ' blah'; or commas:)

Christian Schneider

22 years ago

Ken Tossell wrote:

> pps: don't use "foo $bar blah" -- use 'foo ' . $bar . ' blah'; or commas:)

Why do you say this? I prefer "foo $bar blah".

- Chris

Cesare D'Amico

22 years ago

Alle 11:11, martedì 27 gennaio 2004, Christian Schneider ha scritto:

> Ken Tossell wrote:
> > pps: don't use "foo $bar blah" -- use 'foo ' . $bar . ' blah'; or
> > commas:)
>
> Why do you say this? I prefer "foo $bar blah".

...let the holy war begin...

;-)

--
Cesare D'Amico - boss (@t) cesaredamico (dot) com
http://www.cesaredamico.com        ~       http://www.phpday.it
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Andrei Zmievski

22 years ago

On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Christian Schneider wrote:

> Why do you say this? I prefer "foo $bar blah".

Because it's faster.

- Andrei

Christian Schneider

22 years ago

Andrei Zmievski wrote:

> On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Christian Schneider wrote:
>>Why do you say this? I prefer "foo $bar blah".
>
> Because it's faster.

Ok, that's interesting but irrelevant for most of my code. Readability
is a higher priority in most cases.

Thanks for pointing this out,
- Chris

Sterling Hughes

22 years ago

> Andrei Zmievski wrote:
> >On Tue, 27 Jan 2004, Christian Schneider wrote:
> >>Why do you say this? I prefer "foo $bar blah".
> >
> >Because it's faster.
>
> Ok, that's interesting but irrelevant for most of my code. Readability
> is a higher priority in most cases.
>
> Thanks for pointing this out,

If you use a compiler cache like apc, this performance hit will be
totally removed as the optimizer compiles both representations into the
same format.

-sterling

--
"Reductionists like to take things apart.  The rest of us are
just trying to get it together."
- Larry Wall, Programming Perl, 3rd Edition