what's the difference between plug-in, hook and hack-in?

[TaMpE]

Originally Posted by Lynne

This is no longer true. There are hooks in many queries now.

Usually a plugin is the actually code your write and it 'plugs into' a hook in the code. If you look at an actual hook in the code, it looks like this:

PHP Code:

($hook = vBulletinHook::fetch_hook('group_dojoin')) ? eval($hook) : false; 


In that case, you would write a plug-in which hooks into the hook located at "group_dojoin".

So the whole thing in the XML starting from <phpcode>EVERYTHING HERE</phpcode> go into that where group_dojoin ? Or the tag codes in <phpcode> replaces something below that hook ? Sorry, I still don't understand where the <phpcode> in XML go when it's plugged into the .php file or whatever we're adding to.

And could you explain in brief what's happening in this?

What do these do? This ".=" and the dots in between? I can't find a good place from eval explanation. Tried w3schools, any suggestion?

PHP Code:

eval('$activeusers_members .= ", ' . fetch_template('forumhome_loggedinuser') . '";');
                $activeusers_members = substr($activeusers_members, 2);