too long

Question

Hello im interested in understanding how variables are stored in php.

say i have two variables

$p = 1 + 1
$b = $p.

Does php save the result of the variable or does it save the procedure to run it? Why im wondering is if i store a function in it, does it store the return value or just copies the procedure.

Thank you!

Edit: I think it be best if i clarified what im talking about.

say:

    function foo($something)
{

    for loop
        {
       echo 'Something';

       }

   return $something;
}


$b = foo(5);

echo $b;

from what i encountered just assigning the value executes the function. And when i echo $b it also executes the function again.

Answer 1

So what you're wondering if you're assigning like this

$a = function($arg){
    echo($arg);
}

$b = $a;

will you have a duplicate of function in memory?

Oops turns out i'm wrong. PHP uses copy-on-write mechanism, which makes both $b and $a use the same memory buffer UNLESS any of these variables are modified.

Other possibility is you're wondering what happens when you do something like

$a = 5; $b = 15;
$c = sin($b)*sqrt($a);

Then, only the value of these calculations will be stored in memory, nothing more.