array help

How does one represent a MySQL table as a two dimensional array using the column names as one of the indices? My naive attempt went something like this: while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) $table[] = $row; but that generated this error; Fatal error: [] operator not supported for strings Ok. So then I try to explicitly assign each row, like this: while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) $table[$i++] = $row; While that generates no error, $table contains nothing useful when I'm done. So then I try to assign each row and column, like this: while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($result)) { foreach ( $row as $col => $val) $table[$i][$col] = $val; $i++; } And that got me this error: Fatal error: Cannot use string offset as an array So clearly my understanding of PHP arrays is lacking. Please help. Thanks Fletcher