Comment by Jason Knight on "PHP allows access to non-static methods using ClassName:: But Why does it throw error when accessing non-static properties using ClassName::?"

Statics are STATIC, they exist all the time. NON-STATIC means they only exist after you "new' and assign said resultant object to a variable, and will only exist on that variable. They never actually exist in memory on the class.

That's kind of the POINT of static and non-static... so if you're asking this you kind-of missed the point.

I understood the point, static methods and properties can be called directly by class name without any object instantiation, Correct! It is just that I am confused as to " Why PHP allows non-static methods to be called directly by class name without any object instantiation " & then on the other hand throws error when doing the same with properties. At present, my only best guess is this is how PHP works or in general Object Oriented Programming Languages work, correct me if I'm wrong.

Mohammad Daud Ibrahim If you think about it methods are always static, as their value does not change during runtime and are the same on all instances of said class. Only way to overload them is to create a new class that "extends". Think of them more as being like constants.

Properties on the other hand can have different values for each object instance, with methods they're always the same if the class is the same.

Hence the ability to class overload via typecasting in some languages, or the ability to call a parent class' methods from an extension class.

I think out of all the answers here yours make most sense to me. I think I now understand the why behind it. Thank you very much. 😊

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