variable variables in PHP

[wyrd_fish]

what are they, i keep hearing about them and have become mightily interested

 

[fatbusinessman]

As far as I can tell, the concept is that you can define a variable (call it, for the sake of example, $foo), and assign it a value (say, the string "bar"). You can then refer to $$foo, which will tell PHP to access the variable with the same name as the string in $foo, in this case $bar.

As far as I can tell, it's simply a variant on pointers in a language such as C.

 

[wyrd_fish]

ah...

i wanted to do this for some reason ages ago... this would have come in handy

 

[fatbusinessman]

Really? I haven't come across such a situation yet...

(PHP's documentation provides some explanation, should further clarification be required by anyone )