Anyone ever used PHP's (unset) casting?

Question

I just noticed PHP has an type casting to (unset), and I\'m wondering what it could possibly be used for. It doesn\'t even really unset the variable, it just casts

Answer 1

As far as I can tell, there's really no point to using

$x = (unset)$y;

over

$x = NULL;

The (unset)$y always evaluates to null, and unlike calling unset($y), the cast doesn't affect $y at all.

The only difference is that using the cast will still generate an "undefined variable" notice if $y is not defined.

There's a PHP bug about a related issue. The bug is actually about a (in my mind) misleading passage elsewhere in the documentation which says:

Casting a variable to null will remove the variable and unset its value.

And that clearly isn't the case.