Question

I am new to PHP, and I am practicing with some online tutorials. I usually encounter the sign :: while going through books, online tutorial or blogs. Even if I check some PHP demo applications I see this operator. I tried to put this sign in Google, but I got unexpected results. I even tried to search it in other forums as well, but I didn’t got the right answer. I usually call it a bubble colon, but what is its technical name?

Answer 1

:: is the scope resolution operator (you may sometimes find references to Paamayim Nekudotayim, hebrew for “double colon”). It is used to call static functions of a class, as in

class MyClass {
  public static function hi() {
    echo "hello, world";
  }
}
MyClass::hi();

For more details on classes and objects, refer to the official documentation.