I'm new to PHP so please forgive me if this is a stupid question.
How do you include a variable in a variable?
What I mean is:
<?php
$variable_a = 'Adam';
$variable_b = '$variable_a';
?>
In other words the second variable is the same as the first one.
I won't bother explaining why I need to do it (it will confuse you!), but I just want to know firstly if it's possible, and secondly how to do it, because I know that code there doesn't work.
Cheers,
Adam.
Don't use the quotes, they indicate a string. Just point to the variable directly, like this:
$variable_b = $variable_a;
If you want the variables to be equal, use:
$variable_b = $variable_a;
If you want the second variable to contain the first, use variable parsing:
$variable_b = "my other variable is: $variable_a";
Or concatenation:
$variable_b = 'my other variable is: ' . $variable_a;
PHP have this advantage in producing one string variable's value based on another. To do this, write code like this:
$b = "My name is $name.";
The following code does NOT work:
$b = '$name';
Other occasions in which coding like this works are:
$b = <<<STRING
Hello, my name is $name...
STRING;
If you want to access an array, use:
$b = "My ID is {$id['John Smith']}.";
and of course,
$b = <<<STRING
Hello, my name is {$username}, my ID is {$id['John Smith']}.
STRING;
I recommend using {} because I frequently use Chinese charset in which occasion coding like
$b = "我是$age了。";
will cause PHP look up for variable $age了。 and cause error.
Either without quotes to reference the variable directly, since quotations means it's a string
$variable_b = $variable_a;
Or you can ommit the variable in double quotations, if you want it to appear in a string.
$variable_b = "My name is $variable_a";
