VARIANT(3)								 1								VARIANT(3)

VARIANT class

DESCRIPTION

	The  VARIANT is COM's equivalent of the PHP zval; it is a structure that can contain a value with a range of different possible types. The
       VARIANT class provided by the COM extension allows you to have more control over the way that PHP passes values to and from COM.

       $vVar = new VARIANT($var)

METHODS

       VARIANT::VARIANT ([mixed  $value], [int	$type], [int  $codepage])

	VARIANT class constructor. Parameters:

	      o value
		- initial value. if omitted, or set to NULL an VT_EMPTY object is created.

	      o type
		- specifies the content type of the VARIANT object. Possible values are one of the VT_XXX"Predefined Constants".  In PHP  versions
		prior  to  PHP 5, you could force PHP to pass a variant object by reference by OR'ing VT_BYREF with the $type. In PHP 5, this hack
		is not supported; instead, PHP 5 can detect parameters passed by reference automatically; they do not even need to  be	passed	as
		VARIANT objects.  Consult the MSDN library for additional information on the VARIANT type.

	      o codepage
		-  specifies  the  codepage  that is used to convert strings to unicode. See the parameter of the same name in the "COM" class for
		more information.

	PHP versions prior to PHP 5 define a number of (undocumented) virtual properties for instances of the VARIANT class; these properties have
       all been removed in PHP 5 in favour of its more natural syntax; these differences are best highlighted by example:

       Example #1

	      Variant example, PHP 4.x style

	      <?php
	      $v = new VARIANT(42);
	      print "The type is " . $v->type . "<br/>";
	      print "The value is " . $v->value . "<br/>";
	      ?>

       Example #2

	      Variant example, PHP 5 style

	      <?php
	      $v = new VARIANT(42);
	      print "The type is " . variant_get_type($v) . "<br/>";
	      print "The value is " . $v . "<br/>";
	      ?>

	The  reason  for  the change is that, internally, the COM extension sees VARIANT, COM and DOTNET classes as the same thing, and the design
       philosophy for these classes is that all property and member accesses are passed through to COM with no interference.  The  new	syntax	is
       more natural and less effort, and most of the removed virtual properties didn't make any sense in a PHP context in any case.

       Note

	       PHP  5  takes  a  much simpler approach to handling VARIANTs; when returning a value or fetching a variant property, the variant is
	      converted to a PHP value only when there is a direct mapping between the types that would not result in a loss  of  information.	In
	      all other cases, the result is returned as an instance of the VARIANT class. You can force PHP to convert or evaluate the variant as
	      a PHP native type by using a casting operator explicitly, or implicitly casting to a string by print(3)ing it. You may use the  wide
	      range of variant functions to perform arithmetic operations on variants without forcing a conversion or risking a loss of data.

	See also variant_get_type(3).

PHP Documentation Group 														VARIANT(3)