Bug #7387 Updated: weird problems with unquoted array subscripts

ID: 7387 Updated by: jeroen Reported By: delme@jumeaux.bc.ca Status: Assigned Bug Type: Documentation problem Operating system: PHP Version: 4 (any) Assigned To: jeroen Comments: I am currently writing the section 'why is $foo[bar] bad' in the arrays section. It will adress this problem, so that in the future you can say: RTFM Previous Comments: --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [2001-05-06 11:23:02] derick@php.net Any progress on this? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [2000-12-09 12:22:43] joey@php.net James: Since you have a better idea of exactly what it is you want to document, I'm moving this to you. Close it whenever you think it is sufficently documented. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [2000-11-17 11:17:15] jmoore@php.net Maybe we should look at documenting how the engine corrects bad coding. We often get questions on #php about the engine correcting unquoted string constants and any other behaviour like this. I cant think of any others now but maybe a new chapter on debugging troublesome code or common errors etc is necessary in the manual. This might belong in the FAQ but I think a chapter in the docs wouldnt go amiss. Maybe another thing we should think about doing is including the FAQ in the manual as well as on php.net itself. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [2000-10-24 04:44:00] joey@php.net This is neither a bug in PHP, nor a doc bug...I will make the incompat entry more explicit as soon as I can get to the CVS, but you can see from the last comment what the problem is: you are using a predefined constant as a key in an assoc. array. This would be termed, at best, as "undefined". --------------------------------------------------------------------------- [2000-10-22 19:45:09] lyric@php.net It won't work properly with any reserved word, which brings me back to the point : you should always quote constant strings. The only reason that it works at all is the parser is fixing your mistakes for you. If you set your error_reporting = E_ALL in your php.ini (and restart php), for the code $a[word] = "foo"; you'll see the warning Warning: Use of undefined constant word - assumed 'word' in /var/www/html/test2.php on line 3 I'll leave this issue open for someone from the documentation team to catch up with later. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The remainder of the comments for this report are too long. To view the rest of the comments, please view the bug report online. ATTENTION! Do NOT reply to this email! To reply, use the web interface found at http://bugs.php.net/?id=7387&edit=2