A common problem that the early programming languages had was that there was no way of storing or reusing a piece of data throughout a program. With the introduction of variables, that problem was solved. Variables allow you to store and reuse data throughout your program, and, today, you'll find the use of variables in almost all programming languages including PHP!
In PHP, you create variables by using a $ mark before the name of your variable. Unlike other programming languages, you do not have to declare a variable before using it. All you have to do is give a variable name and give that variable a value.