Question

I’m reading few books about PHP and getting stared to grab the basics. I came across “instantiated” and “initialised” words. I can not find an example which explains them.

What is the difference between “instantiated” and “initialised” in PHP ? What do they mean ? How to use them ? What’s the purpose of using them ?

Provide an example if possible.

Answer 1

You instantiate an object from a class. I.e. you create an instance (hence the name). In code:

$obj = new SomeClass();   

You initialise a variable, which means “giving it its initial (hence the name) value”.

$var = "someValue";

In fact, when you instantiate, you also often initialise it (in the constructor). For example:

// this instantiates an object of class 'SomeClass' and 
// initialises it with "somevalue"
$obj = new SomeClass("someValue"); 

Instantiation is a object-oriented programming term. Initialisation is used in all languages. Both terms are certainly not limited to PHP.