"Global" variable scope in PHP

Question

I have a section of code like the following:

---- file.php ----

require_once("mylib.php");

function($a,$b)
{
    $r = $_GLOBALS['someGlobal'];
    echo $r;
}

---

---- mylib.php ----

$_GLOBALS['someGlobal'] = "Random String";

---

This is a bit trivialized, but is the exact problem I have an I haven't found some related stuff, but nothing that answers my question directly.

When I call function($a,$b) nothing is echo'd, that is - $r is "empty" as if nothing was ever assigned to $_GLOBALS['someGlobal'];

In addition, I have tried with the following:

global $someGlobal; $someGlobal = "Random String";

Same thing, no effect. Also, in file.php if I try with global, or with just $someGlobal it still does not work.

As far as I know, from the documentation on php.net using global $someGlobal in mylib.php (and having that inserted in the top level of file.php) that it would not actually do much since it's already at the "top-level" of the scope hierarchy as far as I can tell. However, I thought registering it as a global might allow it to be accessed from inside the function, but this is clearly not the case.

Can anybody explain why, and explain how to get around this?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: I should not that in file.php if I use $_GLOBALS['someGlobal']; the value is recovered fine if it's not in a function.

Answer 1

Wrong variable name. It's $GLOBALS not $_GLOBALS

http://www.php.net/manual/en/reserved.variables.globals.php

Answer 2

From the docs, there is no _ in the $GLOBALS variable:

This works fine for me:

$GLOBALS['glob'] = "string";

function foob() {
  echo $GLOBALS['glob'];
}

foob();

Answer 3

It's $GLOBALS, not $_GLOBALS!