Re: String concatenation

On 30 June 2000, php@theOrb.net wrote: ptn> I've noticed that all of the documentation uses the dot (".") ptn> operator to concatenate strings; however, I've also noticed that ptn> the PHP parser will expand variables within a string. Is there ptn> any compelling reason to use one method over the other? (For ptn> clarity and the fewer typos I'd make I prefer the latter) I bet a billion people will answer this one, but I may as well. The reason there are two methods is because up to PHP3, the in-line string concatenation was unreliable, e.g.: echo "Hello, this is $mystring"; would work fine, but echo "Hello, $myArray["this element"] is an element of my array"; would not, because the first " mark after the [ would terminate the echo, and cause a parse error. In PHP 4 you avoid that problem using the syntax: echo "Hello, {$myArray["this element"]} is an element of my array"; This works, but many people (including me), thinks this looks MORE confusing than the alternative: echo "Hello, " . $myArray["this element"] . " is an element of my array"; But it's a matter of choice. Also, you can use the dot-operator to do things like call functions, do math, etc., which you can do by simply calling a variable. Seldo. -- Laurie Voss -- www.seldo.com laurievoss@email.com If life isn't worth living, what else can you do with it?