Method accessing protected property of another object of the same class
class, instance, object, php, visibility
Solution
This is intended. It's even possible to access the private members of the same class. So think of the modifiers to be class wise modifiers, not objectwise modifiers.
PHP is not the only language that has this feature. Java for example has this too.
Problem
Should an object's method be able to access a protected property of another object of the same class? I'm coding in PHP, and I just discovered that an object's protected property is allowed to be accessed by a method of the same class even if not of the same object. In the example, at first, you'll get "3" in the output - as function readOtherUser will have successfully accessed the value -, and after that a PHP fatal error will occur - as the main program will have failed accessing the same value. ``` <?php class user { protected $property = 3; public function readOtherUser () { $otherUser = new user (); print $otherUser->property; } } $user = new user (); $user->readOtherUser (); print $user->property; ?> ``` Is this a PHP bug or is it the intended behaviour (and I'll have to relearn this concept… :)) (and are there references to the fact)? How is it done in other programming languages? Thanks!