PHP makes use of variables, arrays, and functions. But can you tell them apart?

In my last column, we talked about some of the special operator symbols that PHP uses, which can be really confusing when you read PHP unless you're familiar with them. Remember what they were? Remember the -< operator? Really, you do? That's so sad then because there is no such operator (at least as far as I know, although I would hate to put any serious money on it; PHP operators seem to just come up out of the cracks).

No, there was the = (setting a value), == (equality of value), === (equality of value and type), && (and), and a whole lot of others. If you've forgotten, I recommend refreshing your memory quickly.

What I want to do next is to turn my attention to three entities that are crucial to PHP—variables, arrays, and functions—and help you be able to identify which is which when you see (or write) them. In this particular column, we're going to focus on variables. Arrays and functions will be covered in subsequent columns.

Variable Basics

All variables in PHP start with a dollar sign ($). The next character must be alpha or underscore, not numeric.

If you're familiar with RPG, you're used to defining the variable before you use it. You indicate the size and type of the variable right off the bat. But that's not the way it works with PHP.

In PHP, you don't formally define the variable. Instead, you define it when you move a value to it (initialize it). And the data type assigned to it will depend on the type of data that's assigned to it at that point.

Thus, $var = 1 will assign a numeric data type and a value of 1 to the variable. And $var = 'abc' will assign a string data type with a length of three and a value of 'abc'. You can even change the data type of a variable within a script simply by assigning it a new value that's a different type of data (although that's not necessarily something you want to do).

In other words, variables in PHP are loosely typed. This doesn't seem very cool to RPG people, but it is what it is. In the final analysis, it leaves proper data-type management up to the programmer. If you want to be wild and wooly, you can be. But hopefully you won't. So, to see what type of variable you're dealing with, look at what type of data it's actually carrying.

Advanced: Variable Use

Before we go on to more esoteric variable characteristics, there's something I should mention.

Those of us in the PHP world tend to think of variables as things that are used in calculations or to store values. They're simple things. X = 123. You set their value and away they go. And that's true in PHP too.

But most of the time in PHP the variable represents the result of a function. That is, in PHP we don't call functions the way we would EXSR or CALLP something in RPG. Instead, most PHP functions are "called" by being set as the value of a variable. That is, suppose in PHP we want to connect to a database. Instead of issuing a command, we use a variable like this to connect to a database:

$conn = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost; dbname=dbfile1');

Or suppose you want to open a file:

$fo = fopen('file1.txt', 'r');

You shouldn't be surprised by this; RPG has been moving in this direction for a number of years with the eval statement being used in lieu of a call, but forearmed is forewarned as they say.

Advanced: Casting and Settype

Naturally, there's a caveat here, specifically the casting and settype operators. Both of these allow you to specify the data type, but neither makes it ironclad so that it can't be overridden. PHP is just not that kind of language.

Casting is something that's done for output purposes, allowing you to change the data type of a variable so that it's more amenable for display. Say you have a variable that you have defined as text, but you want it to display on the page as floating point. (I don't know why you want to do that. I don't even know the guy. Just work with me here.) This is what casting is set up to do, and to do so you just issue this PHP command:

$var1 = '3.14'

echo (float)$var1;

What will display is 3.14 because it's now a floating point number. If you had said echo (int)$var1; then it would have shown up as 3. If you try to include this variable in a calculation after this, that won't work because it's just showing up as floating point. As far as PHP is concerned, it's still a string. Oh, and I know what you're going to ask next: What if the original value was 'abc'? What would happen when you floated it? The answer is it would show up as zero (0). It's not stupid, you know. The point is, casting doesn't change the data type of the variable, just the data type of how you display that variable.

Settype, on the other hand, actually changes the data type without having to move new data to the field. That is, you can always change the data type of a variable just by moving that sort of data to the variable, but Settype allows you to change it without doing that move. So, let's use the same example:

$var1 = '100'                       // so the variable is defined as string

$var1 = (int)$var1           // will change variable 1 so that it is integer

How important is this? Not very. What the heck are you switching data types around for? Yes, you might have to do it sometime, but most of the time you're going to define a variable's data type and then not need to screw around with it. But, if you do, this is how it's done.

Data Types Available

So what's good about PHP variables? PHP allows you to define more data types than you can in RPG, and this can be very useful in the more wide-open world of the web. Among the data types that PHP does support are:

• String—Alphanumeric text
• Integer—Whole numbers
• Floating Point—Decimal numbers (and extremely large integers)
• Boolean—A true or false value
• Array— A series of values, either text or numeric, where a specific entry can be referenced
• Object—An object construct from OOP
• Null—An indication that a data element is empty or non-existent. Indicates less of an existence than zero.
• Resource—A special data type that represents a resource (generally providing a link to this resource). Yes, something like iron, or coal, something we can use to build a weapon or other sort of tool. It could be an image, a connection to a file, some sort of file handler, or another non-PHP entity. It's kind of open, you know. Resource variables aren't something you just create willy nilly; they're created by special PHP functions.

I guess I should say a word about the null data type. If you're all into SQL, then you can dig it, but the null doesn't exist in the IBM i because we deal only with the real world. Null isn't zero, and it isn't blank. Those are things that exist. A null is something that isn't really there. It's even less than low values if you know what I mean by that.

So what kind of pervert would use nulls? Turns out its very nonexistence is its strength. Sometimes, you need to decide if something exists or not. And that's where you get the null. Although we haven't talked about it yet, the predefined PHP variable $_isset—or isset() function—is used to determine if something has been defined. It could be a variable or it could be an instance of something (like a database connection), but if the value of the $_isset variable is null, we know that the connection (or whatever) didn't occur (get created). Hence, when we use nulls, we're generally checking to see if a variable has been set to null. If it has, what we were trying to do has failed (because we generally issue the commands as setting a value to a variable, just the way we're starting to do when calling programs in RPG using CALLP).

Predefined Variables

So far, we've been talking just about variables that you create in your scripts. But PHP also has a whole series of predefined variables that you can use. Many of them have to do with accessing data files or dealing with the web server you're running on (remember, PHP is a server-side language, so it's not running on your PC). For a pretty complete list, look here.

Don't think you will never use these. When you get into using PHP with databases, they'll come in very handy. Just remember when you see a $_Get (for example) that it's a variable, albeit a predefined variable, not a function.

Variable Variables

This is one that you probably won't see very often, but when you do see it, it can surprise you if you're not prepared. Remember how a variable is some sort of character string preceded by a $? Well, a variable variable is a variable preceded by $. That is, if $var is a variable, then $$var is a variable variable. Consider the following code.

<?php

      $State1 = 'Alaska';

      $State2 = 'State1';

      echo($$State1);           //This will output the word 'Alaska'

?>

Of course, the question is, why would anyone want to do something like this? Hmmm, didn't really think anyone would ask me that. Give me a minute….

Actually, I may need more than a minute. Because one of the most common uses involves arrays and we haven't talked about them yet. But be patient; we'll get there. And when we do, we won't mention using variable variables. Truth is, even though you can do it, there are a lot of other things to talk about with arrays, and this one just won't make the cut. But if you see PHP code with a double dollar sign, you know you're dealing with variable variables. Check out the code, see how it's being used, and let me know. Or just keep it to yourself. Your call.

Next column, arrays. All I'll say is, in PHP, they're not your RPG's arrays.