Re: PHP 4.0 Bug #7385 Updated: 'letter counting' bug when counting a-z

On 22 Oct 2000 delme@jumeaux.bc.ca wrote: > ID: 7385 > User Update by: delme@jumeaux.bc.ca > Status: Closed > Bug Type: Scripting Engine problem > Description: 'letter counting' bug when counting a-z > > i assume your point is that <= does not operate on letters in the same way; it's a > string comparison operator. i should have seen this, i suppose. > > it's too late now, but perhaps php should have been developed more along the lines of > perl, with separate operators for string functions... then mathematical operators could treat > letters as base 26 numbers, and string operators could do alphabetical comparisons. > > this special overloading of ++ is misleading. > > Previous Comments: > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > [2000-10-22 11:20:50] lyric@php.net > Applying ++ to a string essentially treats it like a base-26 number. It goes from > 'a,b,c... y,z,aa,ab,ac...' etc. > > Try something like this. Maybe some else has a tidier way? > > for ( $i='A'; $i!='AA'; $i++ ) > print $i. '<br>'; > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > [2000-10-21 21:13:14] delme@jumeaux.bc.ca > for ($i = 'A'; $i <= 'Z'; $i++) { > print $i. '<br>'; > } > > the above code *should* produce 26 letters, but instead it counts all the way from A to YZ. > > A to ZZ counts from A to ZYZ, and so on. > > --------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > Full Bug description available at: http://bugs.php.net/?id=7385 > > > Worse than that, this particular overloading seems...broken. Well, at least for users of other languages that treat $i++ as chr(ord($i)++). Maybe it should be "fixed" in the next version. -- Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams <ignacio@openservices.net>