irrational behavior

Could somebody please explain this? When the line - sort($category) is commented out, the output returns Notice: Undefined offset: in the line "36" for all the repeats (29 in this case) The code below: <? $SQL = "SELECT name FROM categories ORDER BY category_id "; $category = array(); if ( ( $results = mysql_query($SQL, $db) ) !== false ) { while ( $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($results) ) { $category[$row['name']] = $row; } //sort($category); $count = mysql_num_rows($results); $lastIndex = ceil($count/2 -1); //echo $lastIndex; $ii = 0; while ($ii <= $lastIndex) { $cat = $category[$ii]['name']; //=======this is line 36========== $catn = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/", "", $cat); echo "<a href='../categories/", $catn, ".php'>", $cat, "</a><br />"; $ii++; } $ii = $lastIndex; //echo $category[$ii]['category']; while ($ii <= $count -1) { $cat = $category[$ii]['name']; $catn = preg_replace("/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/", "", $cat); echo "<a href='../categories/", $catn, ".php'>", $cat, "</a><br>" ; $ii++; } echo "</td></tr></table>" ; } ?> The same phenomenon happens in another application using the identical code. I don't want to sort the category; that has been taken care of in the query. It just doesn't make sense that sorting would affect the count. :-( -- Hervé Kempf: "Pour sauver la planète, sortez du capitalisme." ------------------------------------------------------------- Phil Jourdan --- pj@ptahhotep.com http://www.ptahhotep.com http://www.chiccantine.com/andypantry.php