I just spotted this, so apologies if it's already been answered. PHP will try to treat first in $arr[first] as a constant. if it doesn't find a constant with this name it will treat it as a string. There may be an error reporting level which throws this up as an error. $arr['first'] is therefore lees ambiguous and so safer (and may even be a nano second faster). Tim Ward Senior Systems Engineer Please refer to the following disclaimer in respect of this message: http://www.stivesdirect.com/e-mail-disclaimer.html > -----Original Message----- > From: Yasuo Ohgaki [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: 20 March 2001 08:17 > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [Q] Parser behavior in a string > > > I noticed that PHP4 accepts and does not raise error (notice > messages) for > following code. > > $arr = array('first' => 'one'); > $str = "This is first element of array: $arr[first]"; > > Question: Is this expected behavior that PHP parse w/o errors? > > If this is not a expected behavior and subject to change, I'm > not going to use > array w/o ' or " for assoc arrays. Because I log all error > messages for > production system including notice messages. > > Thank you. > > [Note for those who are not familiar with use of {} in PHP] > {} can be used to resolve ambiguity not only for arrays, but > also for variables > in strings. > > $str = "This is first element of array: {$arr['first']}"; // > works as it should. > $str = "This is first element of array: $arr['first']"; // > parse error. > > You can use {} for multi-dimensional array and nested objects > properties in > strings also. > i.e. "Text {$obj->foo->var} Text" works like 'Text '. > $obj->foo->var .' Text'. > > -- > Yasuo Ohgaki > > > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To contact the list administrators, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]