In addition to the macros discussed earlier, a few macros allow easy creation of simple global variables. These are nice to know in case you want to introduce global flags, for example. This is somewhat bad practice, but Table Table 52-5 describes macros that do exactly this task. They don't need any zval allocation; you simply have to supply a variable name and value.
Table 52-5. Macros for Global Variable Creation
| Macro | Description |
| SET_VAR_STRING(name, value) | Creates a new string. |
| SET_VAR_STRINGL(name, value, length) | Creates a new string of the specified length. This macro is faster than SET_VAR_STRING and also binary-safe. |
| SET_VAR_LONG(name, value) | Creates a new long. |
| SET_VAR_DOUBLE(name, value) | Creates a new double. |