Question

Very often in code added by my more .NET oriented colleagues, I’ll run into something like this:

function someFunction()
{
    $localVariable = otherFunction();
    $ret = $localVariable * 2; // or whatever

    $localVariable = null;
    return $ret;
}

Is there any benefit to setting $localVariable to null? Since it’s a local variable (and therefore will run out of scope anyway), I would assume not, but please do correct me if I’m wrong.

Answer 1

Your assumption would be correct for both php and .NET.