PHP begginer

chadbobb

I am just begging to learn php. All the places i am reading explain pretty good what there doing but none of them have explained what () are used for. i see beside variables and things like that but they don't so what they are, where you use them, and what they do. Any help would be great.

Frederick

A couple examples
() are in plain terms are containers of evaluations or conditions

if statement

if ($var == 1) { ...... }
if is the functions and the items between the () are what gets checked.

if (isset($var)) { ...... }
this is for checking if a variable is present.

For every ( bracket, there must be a ) bracket.
Such as a table tag in HTML <table></table>

chadbobb

ok, is what goes in side the {} the script that is executed?

Thanks a lot for the help, that is the main thing that has kept me from understanding what is going on.

Frederick

Example:

if ($row == $var) { echo "These equal"; } else { echo "Not equal"; }

Weedpacket

Parentheses ( ) are used in PHP in much the same way as they are used in most programming languages (especially those descended from Algol: C, Perl, Java, etc.): to enclose lists of expressions for functions and commands, and to override operator precedence (so that (1+2)*3 comes out as 9, instead of 7). In the former case, they only really get their meaning in the context of where they're being used.

Braces { } are used in PHP in much the same way as they are used in most programming languages: to enclose a series of statements into a single "block" that can be treated like a single statement.

Thing to do is to start here and work your way through at least the first half-dozen chapters.