Re: order of evaluation

On Tuesday, April 9, 2002, at 12:24 PM, Analysis & Solutions wrote:

Yo Erik: On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 11:39:31AM -0400, Erik Price wrote:

elseif (!empty($_POST['newpassword']) && !$user->set_password($_POST['newpassword']))

Your order of evaluation is correct. But, considering the password length is evaluated in the set_password() function, checking empty() first is a waste of time in 99% of cases.

Hm. I threw in a test echo statement in the class method, to make sure that it wasn't being accessed if $_POST['newpassword'] is in fact empty. The test echo statement is displaying on the receiving page, however, even though there is nothing in $_POST['newpassword']. Here's my class method: """ function set_password($password) { echo "<p class=\"warning\">set_password() accessed, the new password is '$this->password'</p>"; // remove after bug testing

     if (!preg_match('/\d/', $password) ||
         !preg_match('/^[-A-Za-z0-9!@#$%^&*()_ +=\?]{6,10}$/', $password) ||
         !preg_match('/[A-Za-z]/', $password)) {

return false;

     } else {
         $this->password = $password;
         return true;
     }

} """ and here's the code that's hitting the method (but shouldn't be): """ // the Person class is needed here require_once('./includes/Person_class.inc'); // create a new Person instance $user = new Person(); if (!$user->set_email($_POST['email'])) { $error_message = "invalid email"; } elseif ( (!empty($_POST['newpassword']) && $_POST['newpassword']

                                           != $_POST['confirmpassword']) ||

(!$user->set_password($_POST['newpassword'])) ) { $error_message = "<p class=\"warning\"></p>\n"; } else { $success_message = changeinfo_process(serialize($user)); } if ($error_message) { return $error_message; } elseif ($success_message) { return $success_message; } else { die("No error or success message?"); } // destroy the Person instance unset($user); """ On the next page, the echo from my class method is appearing: """ set_password() accessed, the new password is '' """ But as you can see, the value of $_POST['newpassword'] is an empty string -- shouldn't the elseif statement testing for !empty($_POST['newpassword'] catch this? Much thanks to anyone with clearer thinking than I. Erik ---- Erik Price Web Developer Temp Media Lab, H.H. Brown pricee@hhbrown.com