Why can't I access DateTime->date in PHP's DateTime class?

Question

Using the DateTime class, if I try to run the following code:

$mydate = new DateTime();
echo $mydate->date;

I\'ll get back

Answer 1

Besides calling DateTime::format() you can access the property using reflection:

getProperty('date');
$date = $p->getValue($dt);

This is slight faster than using format() because format() formats a timestring that has already been formatted. Especially if you do it many times in a loop.

However this is not a regular behaviour of PHP. A bugreport has already been filed as @Nile mentioned in the comments above.