title: understanding variables and scope
body: <p>EDIT*** my question was a bit hard to understand...let me try again.</p>
  
  <p>I'm having a problem understanding variables and <em>the way they execute their value</em>.</p>
  
  <p>for example.</p>
  
  <p>if I say</p>
  
  <pre><code>$var name= 'mike';
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>then if I test the page nothing will show because nothing on the HTML is requesting the value of mike.</p>
  
  <p>if I did </p>
  
  <pre><code>echo $name;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>then the page would simply show mike.....</p>
  
  <p>that said, if i now do this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$connect2db = mysqli_connect('values here');
  if(!$connect2db){
      die("error connecting to the database" . mysqli_error);}
  
  $db_query = mysqli_query($connect2db, "INSERT INTO email_list(email, firstname, lastname)
                  VALUES ('$email', '$fname', '$lname')");
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>for inserting these values from a form to the db,
  I don't understand how the connection and the commands to the db are being called and put into play because to me</p>
  
  <p>$connect2db equals to "those commands" but nothing is calling it. all $connect2db equals to literally is the instruction to take once its called into play.</p>
  
  <p>where on this chunk of code is the connection being called/put into play? where on this code block is the code being called into action(like the echo above calls $name to be put into action to display its value"???.</p>
  
  <p>I don't see anything on that connect2db variable that calls its action/connection properties to work.</p>
  
  <p>like for example if I was to say </p>
  
  <p>pseudo</p>
  
  <pre><code>if(is true){
  this.$db_query; 
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>this I understand, this to me means that IF something evaluates to true, do the thing in the middle..</p>
  
  <p>with the original first code block, its like the variable is naming and calling itself at the same time.</p>