Confused about variables

Gentleman,

Those responses are absolutely brilliant and have provided answers to the questions that I have been asking for days. Thank you very much indeed for taking the time to post.

I see now that I hadn't quite grasped the concept of statelessness that comes with dealing with web pages.

One final question to just clear things up well and truly. Does all this mean that what are often called variables when referring to controllers are actually just statics, and are more akin to constants given that the controller and everything associated with it are destroyed once the view is rendered and served out to the user?

Thanks again for two very very useful posts.

JB