Why does this work?

[Chri]

I see most everyone uses:
$date = $_POST['date'] ;

But this also works too:
$_POST['date'] ;

Why use the first when the second seems to do the same thing?

[Will Kelly]

Copying the post variable 'date' to a local variable. Can make it easier to type to or to do future processing on it. Hardly makes a difference.

If there's any legacy code in an app that requires register_globals on this could also be used to get round that.

[RedAndy]

As Will says + if you decide to use GET or the date arrives by some other method ( from db etc ) at some point in the future you only have one change to make.

[whitecell]

and what is the difference between post and get please?

[XtrEM3]

post = submitted from within the browser
get = submitted through the URL
sessions = stored on the server
cookies = stored on the client

[whitecell]

i will search more about that :-) thanks for your short and sweet info

[spikeZ]

Also the advantage of registering 'simple' variables from the different globals is that you can do all processing, error checking etc once and not each time you use it eg:

# this as an example.....
$date= stripslashes(htmlentities(trim($_POST['date'])));
# could then be used

echo $date;

mysql_query("select * from table where '$date' = date"); 

Instead of

$date= stripslashes(htmlentities(trim($_POST['date'])));
# could then be used

echo stripslashes(htmlentities(trim($_POST['date'])));

mysql_query("select * from table where '". mysql_real_escape_string($_POST['date'] . "' = date");

#etc..... 

Mike