PHP for Dummies now sits on my bedside table–but it’s way too shocking for any late night reading.
Coming to PHP from the genteel, dignified world of C++ and Java is like walking into a room and discovering–Mrs. Robinson! What are you doing?
In Java, defining a variable is something that happens only after long, dignified courtship. Not even porcupines mating are so careful. The imports, the classes, the public static void main (String args [] )–and then finally, after many a bouquet of roses, you’re ready to beg the favor of, please–let me define a variable or two.
Then you have to spell out what you want, to Java’s complete satisfaction:
int number1 = 1;
String dontSayNo = “please”;
String beggingYouNotToSayNo [] = {”pretty”, “pretty”, “please?”};
Wooo–PHP doesn’t care about stuff like that:
$one_variable = 5;
$another_variable = -2.55;
$yet_another_variable = “Just show me that dollar sign, I’m there!”;
OK, that was my shock yesterday–this is today. Today I told Scott Johnson, who’s teaching me this stuff, “Mrs. Robinson just took off her skin and showed me her skeleton–I’m declaring arrays!”
In Java or C++, you have to set aside all the space you need before you start filling arrays. But PHP has that same “Hey–why not?” attitude. You can start an array, throw a couple of elements in it, and then decide later you want to add several more.
What a whole new world of freedom–it’s like being able to say, “Mom, I’m bringing a friend for dinner…” Then you show up with 7 friends, a puppy, plus (Scott adds) a parakeet and a goldfish–and Mom says, “Hey, no problem, who ever runs out of spaghetti?”
When I grow up, I want to be PHP!
9 responses so far ↓
1 Brendyn // Nov 10, 2003 at 10:49 pm
god bless php and its loosely typed variables :)
then again, with strongly typed data types, you tend to know what’s holding what. But, it’s also convenient to be able to say
$myVar = 1;
Then take in some user input and say:
$myVar = “string”;
Not sure that’s the most efficient thing to do (or the safest), but it’s flexible in terms of that if you ever want to use a variable to possibly hold more than one datatype :)
2 jr // Nov 11, 2003 at 4:11 am
When Betsy Devine passed beyond
after having 120 years rode
They opened her up to see whats inside
and found a tangle of spaghetti code.
3 Betsy Devine // Nov 11, 2003 at 4:45 am
Brendyn–Yeah, and loose-typing is more tolerant of typos. jr–I’m told that really bad code is immortal.
4 jr // Nov 11, 2003 at 5:36 am
Bad poetry aside…
Problem with “variant” data types is when they are used in assignment. Then your at the mercy of whoever wrote the interpreter.
$var1=”Betsy”
$var2=1
$var3=var1+var2 Could return Betsy1 in var3
while
$var3=var2+var1 Could return 1 in var3 not 1Betsy
Depends on which variable is looked at first.
5 fp // Nov 11, 2003 at 3:08 pm
eeeeuuuuwwwww….
code!
6 Betsy Devine // Nov 11, 2003 at 5:48 pm
Hey, FP, I put up with post-modernism because I love reading your site–you might have to tolerate some code on mine.
7 Fran // Nov 13, 2003 at 11:37 am
Betsy
Untyped variables are quite a congnitive shift when you have been working in typed languages. Personally I prefer the discipline that comes with a typed language, so I dont have to remember what type a variable was in. For my search engine, I evolved my own hungarian notation for variables names, something that is lacking in Java (which does not really matter though since the compiler enforces typing in a draconian fashion). All that being said, I do prefer Perl as my untyped scripting language. It it a little stricter than PHP, offers an object model and has a wealth of modules available for it at the CPAN archives.
8 fp // Nov 13, 2003 at 1:44 pm
Would an untyped variable be written in cursive?
9 Scott Johnson // Nov 16, 2003 at 5:13 am
>> Then your at the mercy of whoever wrote the interpreter.
That’s always the case in ANY language of ANY type.
I’m divided on this point while I love the flexibility of untyped variables, if I could add it optionally to PHP, I probably would.