Variable to array without naming it ??

[mwl707]

Hi I have a variable that I would like to make an array without naming the array directly . I hope this makes sense ?

 

$count = 0 ;

$text = "people" . "[$count]" ;

$$text = "John" ;

 

hopefully I want to be able to do this now

 

echo $people[0] ;

 

and the result should be 'John' ??

 

But I get nothing at all

 

Can anyone tell me if I can do this ?? Thanks

[dymon]

This can be a way of accessing it, if that helps:

 

print ${"people[0]"};

[mwl707]

The problem is that $people[0] has no value at all

[cags]

Why do you wish to create it without declaring it, if you then wish to access it using $people[0]? As far as I can see, the only reason to dynamically create a variable is if you aren't implicity calling it.

[mwl707]

I am getting a list from a table in a database , Each of the items in the list need to become arrays. As the list will change I cannot declare the arrays first

 

Mick 

[mwl707]

Thanks for the PM, This code will be a part of a function that I will call several times. Rather than writing the code many time is the reason for not defining the arrays first

[dymon]

Place a bigger code here so we could see the real needs and maybe there is an other logical way.

[cags]

My point was if you have echo $people[0]; further down your code, thats a static variable name meaning the dynamic creation of the array isn't required. Perhaps that was just an example and that isn't the actual code you'll end up using to access the item... but I think as dymon says, a more complete outlook at your objective would help.

[dgoosens]

don't really understand either but...

 

Couldn't you just add an if statement

if(is_array($people)) {
    echo $people[0];
} else {
   echo $people;
}

it would be better though if you could make sure upfront that the data is either an array() or a regular variable...