Home/ Questions/Q 7870209
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-06-03T01:33:15+00:00

Is there any difference between: public function init(a_class_name $classObj) and public function init($classObj) The

  • 0

Is there any difference between:

public function init(a_class_name $classObj)

and

public function init($classObj)

The difference being that example 1 specifies what kind of object I am getting. My question is more: does php still pass the object by reference (Default behavior) or is example 1 some weird shortcut to clone the object. I only ask because in more strict languages (C, Java) example 1 is quite straightforward (and the only example that would work). In PHP it is not as clear, and both methods are used in different places in the PHP docs.

Thanks.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    That’s called a a type hint.

    PHP 5 introduces type hinting. Functions are now able to force parameters to be objects (by specifying the name of the class in the function prototype), interfaces, arrays (since PHP 5.1) or callable (since PHP 5.4).

    — http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.typehinting.php

    In both cases (with and without a type hint) the object is passed by reference. That doesn’t change.

    • 0