This more a question about the why then 'how-to', yet it has been annoying me for some days now. Currently I am doing some work with CodeIgniter and going back to PHP temporarily from Ruby, bugs me about the following scoping magic.
<?php $query = $this->db->get('articles', 2);
if ($query->num_rows() > 0)
{
foreach ($query->result_array() as $row)
{
$data[] = $row; # <-- first appearance here
}
return $data; # <--- :S what?!
}
As you can see, I am not exactly a PHP guru, yet the idea of local scope bugs me that outside the foreach loop the variable is 'available'. So I tried this out inside a view:
<?php
if($a==1)
{
$b = 2;
}
echo $b;
?>
Which result in an error message:
Message: Undefined variable: b
The PHP manual tells about the local scoping, yet I am still wondering why this happens and if there are special rules I do not know about. And it scares me :)
Thanks for sharing ideas,