[Natch]

Globalising a variable is useful IMO when you have a lot of data you wanna pass back in many different variables, whereas a small function for a sepcific purpose might just return one value or array, in which case returning the variable and keeping it out of the $GLOBALS array may be more suitable.

Two examples:

- passing a number to a function to return a ordinalised string (1, 2, 3 => 1st, 2nd, 3rd) would be better simply to have

PHP Code:

$parsed_string = ordinalise($number); 


and

PHP Code:

function ordinalize($num) 
{
    if (!is_numeric($num))
        return $num;

    if ($num >= 11 and $num <= 19) return $num."th";
    elseif ( $num % 10 == 1 ) return $num."st";
    elseif ( $num % 10 == 2 ) return $num."nd";
    elseif ( $num % 10 == 3 ) return $num."rd";
    else return $num."th";
} 


NOTE: I know this could be switched, but this is just an example)

- If you are trying to test for or generate a data caches, you might be better off globalising them at the start of the function, then you wont have to create a multi-dimensional array of the values you want to return, then

PHP Code:

list($cacheone, $cachetwo, $cache_three) = caching_function(); 


afterwards...

I hope that makes sense?