PHP class instantiation. To use or not to use the parenthesis?

Question

Hey.

I've always assumed that - in the absence of constructor parameters - the parenthesis (curly brackets) follow the class name when creating a class instance, were optional, and that you could include or exclude them at your own personal whim.

That these two statements were equal:

$foo = new bar;
$foo = new bar();

Am I right? Or is there some significance to the brackets that I am unaware of?

Thanks.

P.S.
I know this sounds like a RTFM question, but I've been searching for a while (including the entire PHP OOP section) and I can't seem to find a straight answer. (I fear my Googling skills are getting rusty :-)

Answer 1

They are equivalent. If you are not coding by any code convention, use which you like better. Personally, I like to leave it out, as it is really just clutter to me.

Answer 2

Parenthesis are not required for a class that has no constructor. If you put it, the php is smart enough to know that class you have initiated has no constructor in it. So no problem. You can use either.