Strange variable assignment

Question

I have a code:

<?php
echo $var=@E��Sᴦt��Pט㘦�j옦^'"ɘҘ=�^X��5';
?>

It will output 'gzinflate'. How did it happen? I think this is some feature of php when working with strings, but what?

Code in correct encoding (ASCII), but have a lot of special symbols. If the code is broken, try download txt file http://content.wuala.com/contents/dador/web/code.txt with it.

Answer 1

The code

echo $var=@E³»Sát ôPטã…jì^'"ÉÒ=‡ ñ€5';

boils down to

echo             // ...
$var             // ...
=                // ...
@                // error supressor
E³»Sát ôPטã…jì  // an undefined constant, treated as a string
^                //  xor
'"ÉÒ=‡ ñ€5'      // another string literal

and the resulting string is just gzinflate