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Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 20:03:38 +0100
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Message-ID: <200307122003.38874.hudzilla@php.net>
Subject: __get() and __set() in PHP 5
From: hudzilla@php.net (Paul Hudson)

All,

I've been poking around with these two functions while testing the build from 
CVS, and am not sure how they're supposed to work.  From what I can gather, 
they are only called when changing a variable that wasn't in the class 
definition.  I say that because I took the example script from 
http://uk.php.net/zend-engine-2.php and stripped it down to this:

<?php
class Setter {
        public $n;
        public $z;

        function __get($nm) {
                print "Getting [$nm]\n";
        }

        function __set($nm, $val) {
                print "Setting [$nm] to $val\n";
        }
}

$foo = new Setter();
$foo->n = 1;
$foo->z++;
$foo->z++;
?>

That script outputs nothing, despite reading and writing to z twice, and 
writing to n once.  If you comment out the "public $n;" and "public $z;" 
lines, you get the following output:

Setting [n] to 1
Getting [z]
Setting [z] to 1
Getting [z]
Setting [z] to 1

... which is what I was expecting.

Are __get() and __set(), then, only supposed to work with non-declared 
variables, or am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,


--Paul