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strata_ranger at hotmail dot com ¶
15 years ago
Combining two things noted previously:

1 - Unsetting an object member removes it from the object completely, subsequent uses of that member will be handled by magic methods.
2 - PHP will not recursively call one magic method from within itself (at least for the same $name).

This means that if an object member has been unset(), it IS possible to re-declare that object member (as public) by creating it within your object's __set() method, like this:

<?php
class Foo
{
  function __set($name, $value)
  {
    // Add a new (public) member to this object.
    // This works because __set() will not recursively call itself.
    $this->$name= $value;
  }
}

$foo = new Foo();

// $foo has zero members at this point
var_dump($foo);

// __set() will be called here
$foo->bar = 'something'; // Calls __set()

// $foo now contains one member
var_dump($foo);

// Won't call __set() because 'bar' is now declared
$foo->bar = 'other thing';

?>

Also be mindful that if you want to break a reference involving an object member without triggering magic functionality, DO NOT unset() the object member directly.  Instead use =& to bind the object member to any convenient null variable.
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