I'm working on an old PHP website, and Netbeans is complaining about an uninitialized variable. I'm seeing some code like this:

$app->soapAPIVersion($apiVersion);
$_SESSION['apiVersion'] = $apiVersion;

The function looks something like this:

function soapAPIVersion(&$apiVersion)
{
    $apiVersion = '';
    $result = false;
    $soapResult = $client->call('getAPIVersion', array('sessionKey' => $sessionKey), $url);

    if (is_string($soapResult))
    {
        $apiVersion = $soapResult;
        $result = true;
    }

    return $result;    
}

I believe it's using this line to initialize the $aviVersion variable:

$app->soapAPIVersion($apiVersion);

For better coding practice, should that really be this:

$apiVersion = '';
$app->soapAPIVersion($apiVersion);

Or is it a valid trick?

I'm working on an old PHP website, and NetBeans is complaining about an uninitialized variable. I'm seeing some code like this:

$app->soapAPIVersion($apiVersion);
$_SESSION['apiVersion'] = $apiVersion;

The function looks something like this:

function soapAPIVersion(&$apiVersion)
{
    $apiVersion = '';
    $result = false;
    $soapResult = $client->call('getAPIVersion', array('sessionKey' => $sessionKey), $url);

    if (is_string($soapResult))
    {
        $apiVersion = $soapResult;
        $result = true;
    }

    return $result;    
}

I believe it's using this line to initialize the $apiVersion variable:

$app->soapAPIVersion($apiVersion);

For better coding practice, should that really be this:

$apiVersion = '';
$app->soapAPIVersion($apiVersion);

Or is it a valid trick?