I do not think you are looking at a scope issue. You are including code in the defenition of your for loop. Try this: for($i; $i < 50; $i++) { $j = $i + 100; $j++; print "i=$i j=$j hello!\n"; } Another question would be why do you have $j = $i + 100; and $j++; instead combine them the following way $j = $i + 101;