Accessing string offsets

Right now, the following produces a warning when using error_reporting(E_ALL) which can only be catched with ob_start(): <? $string = "foo"; echo $string[3] . "\n"; ?> gives -(1) : Warning - Uninitialized string offset: 3 Is it really necessary to always first check the length before accessing a certain offset? Wouldn't just returning an empty string be enough? I.e., just remove the warning in Zend/zend_execute.c:103 ? Btw, is $string{$offset} documented anywhere? Derick already told me its not but then its in PHP since a long time. Is $string{$offset} really faster but not well-tested? I've already even seen it in a PEAR package (Console/Getopt.php from Andrei). - Markus