How to end a variable name in string without space

Question

How can I end a variable name in a string without using space or any other special character?

Example is there anything I can put between $num and st to output 1st instead of 1 st

$num = 1;
echo "$num st";

Without using the dot opperator for concatination

Yes, you must never use concatenation... even if it gives you the output you need, it's just so evil and wrong — Mark Baker
– Mark Baker, Commented Jun 10, 2012 at 9:39
Perhaps I needed to be more sarcastic, as it clearly wasn't obvious that I was being so — Mark Baker
– Mark Baker, Commented Jun 10, 2012 at 9:48
I thought so, but I wasn't sure, seeing as some people definitely have very strong opinions about things like this, strangely enough :) — Jeroen
– Jeroen, Commented Jun 10, 2012 at 9:51

Quentin · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-10 09:37:09Z

15

Wrap the name of the variable with braces.

$num = 1;
echo "${num}st";

Or use printf syntax instead of simple interpolation:

$num = 1;
printf("%dst", $num);

answered Jun 10, 2012 at 9:37

Quentin

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2 Comments

Robin Castlin Over a year ago

I though you had to type "{$num}st". I guess you learn something new every day :)

Tabrez Ahmed Over a year ago

@RobinCastlin, If you type {$num}st, You'' get {1}st as output, not 1st.

Jeroen · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-10 09:35:24Z

0

Use the concatenating . character:

echo $num . 'st';

answered Jun 10, 2012 at 9:35

Jeroen

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6 Comments

nist Over a year ago

The reason I asked this question was becouse concatination is a rather costly opperator and the code become hard to read but thanks anyway

Jeroen Over a year ago

That's simply not true, concatenation is actually slightly faster: stackoverflow.com/questions/13620/… (though you shouldn't make a decision based on that speed difference, its negligible)

Mark Baker Over a year ago

Have you actually measured the cost difference between using concatenation and other options such as those posted by Quentin... unless you're talking about concatenating significant numbers of strings that are all several thousands of bytes in length, it's almost immeasurable

nist Over a year ago

Well it's not costly in speed but in memory usage. A concatination stores every string and then concatinates them. This leads to that a concatination uses double the memory

Mark Baker Over a year ago

@nist - that memory overhead is temporary, until it's completed the concatenation operation, which is why it's only significant for extremely long strings, and even then it's for the few nanosconds that it takes to execute the concatenation itself.

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