What does this code do in magento?

Question

What does this code do in magento ?

 $customer = $this->_getCustomer();

this code in createPostAction in customer/accountController .

Why put underscore "_" in most of Method

Answer 1

This function gets the current user data. @return Mage_Customer_Model_Customer

I believe functions with _ at the start are private. Public functions do not have an underscore.

See: http://doc-magento.com/nav.html?_functions/index.html

Answer 2

The underscore prefix is part of the Zend Framework 1 coding standards (and thus the Magento 1.x coding standards) that every private or protected method or property name should start with an _.
This goes back to the php version 4 days, when there where objects but only public visibility.

Nowadays with php5 there is no real reason to proliferate this convention, except that it is part of the Magento coding standard.