Re:If PHP Were British (2011)
by ksangeelee on Friday December 02, 2022 @05:50AM
(#33828909)
The '$' being used in variable names I think originates from the word 'string', from when it was necessary to differentiate types of variable in the code. It never related to currency.
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I really think you shouldn't take the article, its conclusions and recommendations too serious.
You mean ... seriously?
Re:If PHP Were British (2011)
by shaftoe444 on Friday December 02, 2022 @06:00AM
(#33828969)
A bit like people who get annoyed by the word soccer, an English word originally to distinguish Association Football (soccer) from Rugby Football (rugger) and other codes.
My new favorite piss take of this debate:
Worth noting that this word also has class connotations, in that only toffs at Oxford called it soccer. Working class people never did.
I always assumed it originated with Perl, where $ is for scalars and @ for arrays.
I'm sure this use of $ character is much older than Perl.
One counter-example I know first hand: Sinclair ROM BASIC uses $ for denoting strings, in both variable and function names.
The one I have in a Spectrum is copyrighted 1982, around 5 years before first Perl was released.
I'm sure there are older examples like this.