get_instance() in Codeigniter: Why assign it to a variable?

Question

In Codeigniter, get_instance() is a globally available function that returns the Controller super-object which contains all the currently loaded classes (it ret

Answer 1

Method chaining is not supported in PHP4 and CI dropped support for PHP4 very recently (from version 2.0.0). Also it's easy to write $CI than writing get_instance() every time.