What's the purpose of '\' when we create an object?

Question

What's the purpose of using backslash \ when we create an object in PHP?

$iter = new \ArrayIterator($arr);

Take a look here: http://php.net/manual/en/language.namespaces.importing.php — Daan, Jul 23 '15 at 10:22
Or here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4790020/what-does-a-backslash-do-in-php-5-3 — t.h3ads, Jul 23 '15 at 10:22

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 23 '15 at 10:23

It's used to create a new object of a fully qualified class. Say, you're code is in the namespace "Namespace1":

namespace Namespace1;
$iter = new ArrayIterator();

would be resolved as Namespace1\ArrayIterator(); and

$iter = new \ArrayIterator();

would be resolved as ArrayIterator();

1 Answers1