Variables are best thought of as containers for data. When you assign data to a variable, it can be altered, printed to the browser, saved to the database, emailed, and so on.

 

Variables in PHP are extremely flexible. They allow you to store data easily across your entire site for long periods of time, but at the same time can be temporary if you wish it so. They only exist for the duration of the script. Once a new script is called, all existing variables and the data bound to them is erased, unless you take certain steps to make alter their longevity.

 

PHP has some predefined variables, $globals is on of them.

 

Let’s write a short script to show us the use of variables.

 

<?php

 

print_r ($GLOBALS);

 

?>

 

After we open the tags, the print_r() function is called to make it a little more user friendly and more appealing to the eyes, a more human-readable format. We pass the predefined variable $GLOBALS to print_r(), and you should get a long page full of arrays.

 

The results will be different on every server because each server has it’s own configuration.

 

Variable Syntax:

1. All variable names must be preceded by a dollar sign ($).
2. Following the dollar sign, the variable name must begin with either a letter (A-Z, a-z) or an underscore (_). It can’t begin with a number.
3. The rest of the variables name can contain any combination and quantity of letters, underscores, and numbers.
4. You may not use spaces within the name of a variable. (Instead, the underscore is commonly used to separate words.)
5. Variables are CASE-SENSITIVE! $var and $Var are two completely different constructs, although it would be a bad idea to use two variables with such similar names.

 

And that about sums it up for now! I’ll write more about arrays, different types of strings, quotation marks and that good stuff very soon.

 

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