Underscore method prefix

Question

I\'ve been examining the code of CodeIgniter and CakePHP and I noticed that some of the methods in their classes are prefixed with an underscore _ or a double u

Answer 1

In Codeigniter, methods within controllers can normally be called as part of the url so you might call the method "index" in controller "main" as follows:

mysite.com/main/index.

You might also have a method within your controller that you don't want someone to be able to call as a segment in the url, so you would prefix it with a "_" (single underscore) .. that is different than making it private. Private methods are only callable within the class where it is defined. So a controller method could be prefixed with an underscore which would make it uncallable as a url segment and it could also be declared private which would make it uncallable from other classes.