I was just messing around with PHP and the very promising web application framework CodeIgniter, which I’m using to develop NOVALISTIC 3.0, and I encountered a funny parse error listed below:

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM in D:\NOVALISTIC\3.0\ci\system\application\views\header.php on line 10

The first thing I (obviously and intuitively) did, was search PHP Bugs for the string ‘PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM’… I see a bunch of bug reports but I wasn’t that interested in any of them, so I went off to Google the string, and Wikipedia came up as the first result… specifically, this article.

If you’re lazy to click the link it’s alright I’ll explain it in short. Paamayim Nekudotayim is Hebrew (can you believe it?) for ‘double colon’ (::), which is the scope operator in PHP, as in:

<?php
 
// PEAR_DB, that's right.
require_once('config.php');
require_once('/path/to/DB.php');
 
/*
See there? The scope operator right between
the DB class and the connect() method.
*/
$db = DB::connect("mysql://$sqluser:$sqlpass@$sqlhost/$sqldata");
 
// Code that follows...
 
?>

Just something pretty interesting to know, nothing really big :D So if you encounter an unexpected paamayim nekudotayim, you’re doing something wrong that might be involving objects.

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