Question

I have a pointer to an object, which I want to release, and then create a new one.
What I tried:

$this->myObject = null;
$this->myObject = new myObject($newVar);

Should this work? Am I doing it wrong?
I tried calling __destructor() manually but that triggered an “unknown function” error.

Answer 1

PHP does not have pointers.

But, yes, this is fine. You don’t need to set to null either; the original, now-dangling object will be garbage collected just like any other object.

Example:

<?php
class A {
   public function __construct() {
      echo "*A";
   }
   public function __destruct() {
      echo "~A";
   }
}

$o = new A;
$o = new A;

// Output: *A*A~A~A
?>