How to do type/existence checking in PHP5

Hi In PHP5 the behaviour of illegal string offsets has changed. This is documented in the 'thin changes' file. This gives a problem in checking for existence / types of values, directly into a deeper level of a multidimensional array. I reported this as a bug[1] because I find the behaviour unfortunate, and furthermore it's inconsistent. This was refused, with a note 'So don't do it'. I think it's a really bad idea not to check the existence/types of values, before using them, so how should this be done properly in PHP5, without risking fatal errors in the case of a non-existent array? This is a problem in migrating applications from PHP4 because the error will not appear unless the value deosn't exist, which is exactly why you do the check. [1] http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=28107 -- ./mvh Christian Jul Jensen Frelance webprogrammer TYPO3 Typehead Denmark