Re: PHP textbook suggestions?

I see a couple of recommendations for textbooks now... thanks. As to why I think one style is good or bad-- probably the same reasons any of you prefer yours + in my experience, the style that I have adopted is the easiest for the beginners to understand and not be confused by. This list (naturally) underestimates how hard it is for non-techie, non naturally tech-inclined newbies to approach language syntax. The quotation thing is a good example-- they are taught about interpolation and trying to learn about quotation marks and escaping and when each is appropriate, then they are shown code like: echo substr("abcdef", 1); So they naturally want to know-- why the double quotes? And there's no good logical reason for double quotes in the example-- and there are languages where the function could take a variable to be interpolated that DOES need double quotes-- so it is very confusing to them. If I CAN, I would like to avoid that confusion so *I* Can teach them about the differences. Similarly my preference and teaching that they keep variables out of quotes-- it's a style thing, something I consider good practice, something I see most code examples I find use, so if I could find a text that did it, that would be great. For that matter, even a text that didn't do it but was CONSISTENT. It's amazing how many books are totally inconsistent. These students aren't at a level where inconsistency is the best approach to stimulating their learning. They get there, but it takes a while. c -- Chris Lott