Static Function Variables and Concatenation in PHP

Question

Consider the following:

$var = \'foo\' . \'bar\'; # Not a member of a class, free-standing or in a function.

As soon as I mark $var

Answer 1

You can not do expressions in initializers. You can, however, do this:

define('FOOBAR', 'foo'.'bar');
static $var = FOOBAR;
echo $var;

Little known fact is that even though initializers can not contain runtime expressions, it can contain constants which can be defined and resolved at runtime. The constant has to be defined by the time $var is first used though, otherwise you'll get string identical to the constant (e.g. "FOOBAR").