note 53316 deleted from language.variables.scope by sean

Note Submitter: Andy Morris ---- To answer "dpk at dpk dot net", here is the reason as I see it. I've added some extra debug lines to show what's happening... <?php print "<pre>"; $GLOBALS['foo'] = array ('bar' => 'frank'); // global variable foo is now an array print $GLOBALS['foo']['bar'] . "\n"; // OK, prints "frank" because foo is an array var_dump($GLOBALS['foo']); // shows foo array definition and contents $foo = $GLOBALS['foo']['bar']; // OK, but sets global variable foo to string "frank" var_dump($foo); // confirms foo is now just a string, NOT an array print $GLOBALS['foo']['bar']; // WRONG! global 'foo' is no longer an array print "</pre>"; ?> This now prints: frank array(1) { ["bar"]=> string(5) "frank" } string(5) "frank" f The final print out of $GLOBALS['foo']['bar'] produces the single "f", and to be honest I don't know what I'd expect it to print here as it is now undefined at this point. So frankly ;-), this is not in fact contrary to what you might expect.