Difference in CI session

[eluser]skunkbad[/eluser]
Aken is right.

CodeIgniter makes all loaded models and libraries available to the controller, which is why they are available using $this. $this refers to the controller instance, so when you are inside a controller, you are effectively accessing a property (sometimes called a member) that has been created for you by CI. You don't see it often in CI, but in many OOP implementations you will see "::". This is a scope resolution operator, and is usually used to call a static method, instead of "->", which is only used for accessing methods that are not static.