PHP Arrows, Java Equivalent
<p>I am just starting to research and learn PHP.  I have a decent background in Java and I am trying to draw some correlations.  One of the completely unfamiliar symbols I saw in PHP was the ?object access seperator? <code>-&gt;</code> as seen in this example: </p>

<pre><code>    &lt;?php
    class SimpleClass
    {
            // property declaration
            public $var = 'a default value';

            // method declaration
            public function displayVar() {
                echo $this-&gt;var;
            }
    }
    ?&gt;
</code></pre>

<p>From what I have researched, it appears that the object access separator is equivalent to the dot notation used in Java.  Such as in the example:</p>

<pre><code>public class SimpleClass
    {
    // property declaration
    public String val = "a default value";

    // method declaration
    public void displayVar() 
    {
        System.out.println(this.val);
    }
}
</code></pre>

<p>Is this a safe assumption to make?  Are there additional uses of this operator?</p>
