Help/Advice needed

[The-Last-Escape]

Ok I have a major question.  I have been studying for a long time, I want to go slow, get the ideas, and move foward at a good steady, sound knowledge pace, I have went through hundreds of tutorials and finally found one that is teaching me literally teaching me php.  ok I am running off of

[a href=\"http://www.hudzilla.org/phpbook/index.php\" target=\"_blank\"]http://www.hudzilla.org/phpbook/index.php[/a]

I have learnt a lot since I started, I have gotten down variables, setting variables, manipulating variables with operators, i have not yet mastered or memorized all operators just greater than, less than, equals, equal to or greater than, equal to or less than, or, not, things of that nature.  I haven't memorized them all.  I have learnt functions, roughly how to look at a prototype of a function from teh manual and be able to tell relatively what's going on, except for what's in parenthesys still confuses me, I have learnt functions, atleast the basics of concepts and ideas surrounding the greater theory of functions.  Now I am wading throughs ome stuff that I don't understand, not only that I am disheartened by one fact.  First of all I cut through a tutorial about MIND YOU-I have not done arrays and objects yet, I was trying to grasp earlier stuff before I move onto more advanced stuff.    I also learnt how to do if, elseif, while, and some other statements liek that, I also understand the basic structure of dowhile, and for statements.  I am having trouble with switch case statements, and a little clouded on some of the deeper aspects of typecasting.  I just need someone who can point me in the right direction and HOW DO I PULL ALL THIS TOGETHER to make a program, how is the entire section on mathimatical functions going ot help me create a program, like send form information, and code forums, adn guest books, I need to do this, and I want to learn as fast as possible, so I can start coding then let the better aspects of the knowledge fall in through trial and error.

[trq]

That book is the one I recommend to anyone beginning. If you read it from start to finnish you will have a good grasp. Obviously, latge topics like the Math functions aren't required in all applications, but its good to browse through.

 

Even seasoned PHP'ers end up needing the manual, so don't think that you need to memorize evry function to program in php.

 

HOW DO I PULL ALL THIS TOGETHER

 

Ah... thats the hard part. Learning the langauage does not nesesarily make you a programmer. You need to learn how to think problems through.

 

What is it about switches you don't understand? they are relativly simple constructs.

 

<?php

  $foo = 'a';

  switch($foo) {
    case 'a': // if foo = a do the following
      echo "foo = a";
      break;
    case 'b': // if foo = b do the following
      echo "foo = b";
      break;
    default: // a default catch all.
      echo "foo = niether a or b";
      break;
  }

?>

[The-Last-Escape]

Thank you again man