That's not a different use though.  You are simply creating a global variable in one function and accessing it in another.  I don't think this patch clarifies anything.  Perhaps the fact that you can create global variables inside a function is not documented well enough, but a much simpler documentation fix can take care of that.

For me, the fact that it was needed to create a global variable in one function to access to in another was not clear. Specially because it's not the case for vars that are outside any function. I don't think it's something evident.

My patch probably doesn't explain it well, I'll try to make one more clear tomorrow (yup, it's damn too late here).

I really don't understand why this point would have confused you.  The only variables you can access inside a function are the variables local to that specific function.  If you want to access a variable defined outside of the function (ie. a global) you have to specify you want to access that global variable.  There is no way for a function to access another function's locally scoped variables.

Yes. I knew I had to declare the var as global is the function where I wanted to use it. What was not clear for me was that I  needed to declare it as global in the two functions. If I take the functions from the patch as example, declaring $a and $b as global in Sum() was evident, but declaring them as global also in KeepVariables() was not evident.

Of course, when you *know* it, it's clear, but when you don't know it, and since the doc isn't IMHO clear about this, it's not evident at all.

This patch should be more clear (hopefully):

Index: en/language/variables.xml
===================================================================
RCS file: /repository/phpdoc/en/language/variables.xml,v
retrieving revision 1.52
diff -u -r1.52 variables.xml
--- en/language/variables.xml	3 Jul 2002 22:51:23 -0000	1.52
+++ en/language/variables.xml	23 Jul 2002 14:26:36 -0000
@@ -375,8 +375,10 @@
     The above script will output "3".  By declaring
     <varname>$a</varname> and <varname>$b</varname> global within the
     function, all references to either variable will refer to the
-    global version.  There is no limit to the number of global
-    variables that can be manipulated by a function.
+    global version. In the same way, if you want to access in a function
+    to a var from another function, declare it as global in both functions.
+    There is no limit to the number of global variables that can be
+    manipulated by a function.
    </simpara>
 
    <simpara>

gosh, and how would the KeepVariables() function know to access the *global* variables $a and $b if you didn't tell it to?

this is IMO just a matter of common sense, so please, stop this thread.