My variable disappears

PHP
1

If I have a page index.php with code


$page = 'index';
include("sayit.php");

and page sayit.php with code

echo $page;

The output is “index”

However, if I have 3 pages, index.php, sayit.php and functions.php with code:
index.php:


$page = 'index';
include("sayit.php");

sayit.php:


include("functions.php");
sayit();

and functions.php:


   function sayit()
     {
	   echo $page;
	 }

The output is nothing. Why does this happen?

2

I changed the functions page to:

function sayit()
     {
       global $page;
       echo $page;
     }

and it works fine. I didn’t realize functions don’t have access to variables declared outside of them. (:

3

better to do this rather than use globals

function sayit($stuff)
{
echo $stuff;
}
sayit($page);

4

in most of the cases, its not better to print inside the function.
can be improved as

function sayit($stuff)
{
return $stuff; //return value instead of printing which provides flexibility
}
echo sayit($page);