Re: Variables with - in their name

On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 5:12 AM, Ashley Sheridan <ash@ashleysheridan.co.uk> wrote: > On Sun, 2012-11-18 at 01:37 -0700, Nathan Nobbe wrote: > >> On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 11:09 PM, Ron Piggott < >> ron.piggott@actsministries.org> wrote: >> >> > I have made the following variable in a form: (I am referring the >> > <select> ) >> > >> > <?php >> > >> > $row['promo_code_prefix'] = 42; >> > $row['promo_code_suffix'] = 2; >> > >> > echo "<select name=\"distributor-" . >> > $row['promo_code_prefix'] . "-" . >> > $row['promo_code_suffix'] . "\" style=\"text-align: >> > center;\">\r\n"; >> > >> > ?> >> > >> > It could be wrote: >> > >> > <?php >> > >> > echo $distributor-42-2; >> > >> > ?> >> > >> > Only PHP is treating the hyphen as a minus sign --- which in turn is >> > causing a syntax error. >> > >> > How do I retrieve the value of this variable and over come the “minus” >> > sign that is really a hyphen? >> > >> >> php > ${distributor-42-2} = 5; >> php > echo ${distributor-42-2}; >> 5 >> >> I think that's it. >> >> -nathan > > > I'd just try and avoid the hyphens in the variable names in the first > place if you can. Can you guarantee that everyone working on this system > will know when to encapsulate the variables in braces? > > Thanks, > Ash > http://www.ashleysheridan.co.uk > > Agreed. From http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.basics.php : "Variable names follow the same rules as other labels in PHP. A valid variable name starts with a letter or underscore, followed by any number of letters, numbers, or underscores." The ${var} circumvents this (somewhat), but in the case above, it would be better to avoid the dashes and use underscores.