Emulating block scope in PHP

Variables are born, they live their lives, and then they die. But beware! (Cue spoopy theme music.) Zombie variables lurk in the simplest of PHP.

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Bypassing private and protected visibility in PHP

Members declared protected can be accessed only within the class itself and by inherited classes. Members declared as private may only be accessed by the class that defines the member.

PHP documentation on property visibility

This is true only in an academic sense: code outside the object can still get and set private and protected members. As usual in PHP, all it takes is a little magic.

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