How does this work?

PHP
1

I thought I would download a package solution of a web application to see how other applications handle file paths. I downloaded phpbb and they have a file called common.php located in their project folder (in this case: phpbb)

in common.php they ahve this bit of code:

if (defined('IN_CRON')) 
{ 
    $phpbb_root_path = dirname(__FILE__) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR; 
}

In index.php they are using the $phpbb_root_path variable to include common.php.

How is this possible? If that variable is defined in common.php then how can they use it to include common.php itself?

2

variable values can, uh, vary.

Are you certain it isn’t being assigned a value elsewhere as well?