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variant(3) [php man page]

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)

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VARIANT_MUL(3)								 1							    VARIANT_MUL(3)

variant_mul - Multiplies the values of the two variants

SYNOPSIS
mixed variant_mul (mixed $left, mixed $right) DESCRIPTION
Multiplies $left by $right. PARAMETERS
o $left - The left operand. o $right - The right operand. Boolean values are converted to -1 for FALSE and 0 for TRUE. Note As with all the variant arithmetic functions, the parameters for this function can be either a PHP native type (integer, string, floating point, boolean or NULL), or an instance of a COM, VARIANT or DOTNET class. PHP native types will be converted to variants using the same rules as found in the constructor for the "VARIANT" class. COM and DOTNET objects will have the value of their default property taken and used as the variant value. The variant arithmetic functions are wrappers around the similarly named functions in the COM library; for more information on these functions, consult the MSDN library. The PHP functions are named slightly differently; for example variant_add(3) in PHP cor- responds to VarAdd() in the MSDN documentation. RETURN VALUES
Variant Multiplication Rules +--------------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ | If | | | | | | | Then | | | | +--------------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ |Both expressions are of the string, date, charac- | | |ter, boolean type | | | | | | | Multiplication | | | | |One expression is a string type and the other a | | |character | | | | | | | Multiplication | | | | |One expression is numeric and the other is a | | |string | | | | | | | Multiplication | | | | | Both expressions are numeric | | | | | | | Multiplication | | | | | Either expression is NULL | | | | | | | NULL is returned | | | | | Both expressions are empty | | | | | | | Empty string is returned | | | | +--------------------------------------------------+--------------------------+ SEE ALSO
variant_div(3), variant_idiv(3). PHP Documentation Group VARIANT_MUL(3)
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