php singleton object not created

[ruDzter]

I'm trying to learn about OOP, and create a singleton to return a settings object within a PHP script. For some reason, the instance never seems to get set. I'm echoing a message \[code\]getting settings\[/code\] anytime the singleton goes through its construct (it's silent if it just returns the existing instance). When this is called from within a script, I'm getting dozens of these \[code\]getting settings\[/code\] messages, one for each time I call \[code\]mySettings::getSettings()\[/code\]-- \[code\]$instance\[/code\] doesn't seem to be created, even when I try to dump it immediately after it is created.Can anyone point out where I'm going wrong?Here's the code:\[code\]class mySettings { private $settings; private static $instance; private function __construct(){ $configfile = "myconfig.ini"; if(!$this->settings = parse_ini_file( $configfile )){ die('CONFIG NOT FOUND/PARSED'); } } public static function getSettings(){ if ( !self::$instance ){ echo "getting settings-- no instance found!"; self::$instance = new mySettings(); var_dump(self::$instance); // <-- dumps nothing } return self::$instance; } public function setParam( $key, $value ){ $this->settings[$key] = $value; } public function getParam( $key ){ return $this->settings[$key]; }}\[/code\]