ID: 3928
Comment by: tomer at parity-bit dot com
Reported By: erw dot dongen at wxs dot nl
Status: Open
Bug Type: Feature/Change Request
Operating System: Windows 98
PHP Version: 4.0
New Comment:
I think you could do something with the range() function here as a
workaround.
Previous Comments:
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[2001-02-10 14:15:33] jimw@php.net
refiling against 4.0.
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[2000-03-26 02:11:31] erw dot dongen at wxs dot nl
To my knowledge there's no way of labelling/declaring the keys in an
associative arrays once
and then simply only specifying the individual values.
So when I set up an array with basically constant string values I ended
up typing something like this 75 times:
$tokens[] = array ( "startcode" => "la",
"endcode" => "di",
"classname" => "da"
);
$tokens[] = array ( "startcode" => "ob",
"endcode" => "la",
"classname" => "di"
);
etc.
So an extension to the array() definition would greatly be appreciated
to alleviate the typing.
I suggest something like:
array ( [keylist][keylist][keylist] =
val1, val2, val3, etc,
);
or in the above example
array ( [][keylist] = )
Where 'keylist' is a finite list of keys of the associative array
and '[]' denotes the current behaviour of defaulting to numeric keys
starting at 'number of element in array =1'
Example:
$tokens = array ( ['foo',
'bar']['start','end','class'] =
"la", "di", "da", // the elements of
'foo'
"ob", "la", "di" // ditto 'bar'
);
Which gives $tokens['foo']['start']="la",
$tokens['foo']['end']="di",
$tokens['foo']['class']="da"
$tokens['bar']['class']= "ob",
$tokens['bar']['class']= "la",
$tokens['bar']['class']= "di".
Similar: $tokens = array( []['start,'end',class'] =
"la", "di","da",
"ob", "la", "di"
);
gives $tokens[0]['start']="la" etc. until
$tokens[1]['class']="di"
(assuming $tokens was empty)
Possible extensions for numeric keys may be:
'[1..3]' denoting a finite list with numeric keys starting with 1 and
ending with 3 inclusive.
In this case, if less than 3 rows are subsequently defined,
row3 would still exist but be empty
and
'[5..]' denoting 'start at numeric key 5 and count upwards'
Basically it all boils down to the inability to specify an associative
key-name for a specific index position - a kind of a reverse 'key()'
function. (Yes indeed that's the second feature request in the same
report;-))
Can't say that I've succeeded in limiting the typing this time, but I
hope you can do something with these suggestions. Thanks and keep up
the excellent work!
Erwin van Dongen
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Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=3928&edit=1