RE: [PHP] help with undefined variables, please

I prefer to use isset(), not empty(). It's more accurate, in that it knows the difference between a variable that just isn't set, and one that has an empty value (which may be valid). Matthew Walker Senior Software Engineer ePliant Marketing -----Original Message----- From: Philip Olson [mailto:philip@cornado.com] Sent: Tuesday, May 14, 2002 12:04 PM To: The Gabster Cc: php-general@lists.php.net Subject: Re: [PHP] help with undefined variables, please > PHP Notice: Undefined variable: action in > C:\Apache\htdocs\easyletter2\easyletter.php on line 73 > > Why do I get an undefined variable error for $action, $pw, $disp, > $found when they do not have to be declared in the script? > if ($action=="sign"){ At this point, $action was not set. At some point in your script you may want to check if $action exists at all and if not, assign it to boolean false (just one of a million things you can do). Like, on top of the script: // Initialize various variables if they are empty $vars_to_init = array('action','pw','disp','found'); foreach ($vars_to_init as $var) { if (empty(${$var})) { ${$var} = false; } } That'll check them, and set empty vars to false. Seems kinda weird, it is ;) Undefined variables are level E_NOTICE errors in PHP. Some people find these a bit annoying and turn them off, most prefer to eliminate them. When you said variables don't have to be declared in PHP, you are right in that they are just E_NOTICE level errors, not Fatal E_ERROR. By default, error_reporting levels do not show E_NOTICE but good little programmers attend to them. A quick and dirty way to magically get rid of them is to turn down error_reporting in php.ini or at runtime. error_reporting is both a PHP directive and a PHP function. There is also '@' available to suppress an error, it works on both functions and variables. See: http://www.php.net/manual/language.operators.errorcontrol.php What is done of course depends on the situation and the person. Regards, Philip Olson -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php --- Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free. Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com). Version: 6.0.351 / Virus Database: 197 - Release Date: 4/19/2002