About symbol " -> " in php

Question

I don't understand exact meaning of symbol " -> " please anyone help me to clear about it. What is the exact meaning of this symbol in php.

Answer 1

Since PHP uses the dot . as a concatenation operator, it uses the arrow -> where most other languages would use a dot to access a property or method of an object. It’s technically called the “object operator” but most people call it the arrow (or “arrow operator” or, following JavaScript, the “single-arrow operator”).

Answer 2

Alexander Sokolov damn good explanation.

Answer 3

"->:" its actual name is "object operator".

In 2008 in an opensource linux meet conducted in Hyderabad we proposed a name as "calls". So that while writing code we can pronounce $class calls object/property etc.

For eg, $class->abc() can be pronounced as $class calls abc().

Ever since we are using that name(calls) unofficially.