What's the meaning of the PHP token name T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM? [duplicate]

21
votes

What's the story behind the ::'s sometimes token name

T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM

I'm mainly interested in knowing if

  1. This is an abbreviation for something else.
  2. This is a phrase in a language other than English, and if so what's the language and what's a rough translation.
  3. This is some obscure-to-me programming term.
  4. Drunk developers.
2
phphistory
פעמיים נקודתיים ;) – user187291

2 Answers

36
votes

From the PHP docs:

Paamayim Nekudotayim would, at first, seem like a strange choice for naming a double-colon. However, while writing the Zend Engine 0.5 (which powers PHP 3), that's what the Zend team decided to call it. It actually does mean double-colon - in Hebrew!