PHP course. Variables (symbolic links) and Predefined variables

<p>References in PHP are a means of accessing the contents of a single variable under different names. They are not like C pointers; for example, you cannot perform address arithmetic on them, they are not real addresses in memory, etc.</p> <p>Instead, pointers in PHP are aliases in a variable name table. In PHP, the name of a variable and its contents are different things, so the same contents can have different names. An analogy can be made with file names and file names in Unix: variable names are directory entries, and the contents of a variable are the file itself. References in PHP are analogous to hard links in Unix file systems.</p> <p>In this tutorial, we&#39;ll explore references. This topic is a bit peculiar: the link mechanism is rarely used directly.</p> <p>But it&#39;s still an important topic. When we start using arrays and objects, we will need an understanding of how references work.</p> <p>Don&#39;t take this material too seriously. The main thing is to grasp the concept and know the concept itself, the rest is by necessity.</p> <p>References in PHP are a means of accessing the contents of a single variable under different names.</p>