Hi, I have a little question about a fragment of PHP I found on the net. Please don't bash me for not doing proper research, but I have a deadline to meet this evening and can't spend much time on language details, so here goes... $dir = ( $path { strlen( $path ) - 1 } == '/' ) ? substr( $path, 0, strlen( $path ) - 1 ) : dirname( $path ); What's that syntax element called where a variable ($path) is followed with a set of braces {}? Is it an index? Sorry for the dumb question, I'm a PHP newbie.

Hey Dave,

I'm a stupid noob:

Quote:

String access and modification by character

Characters within strings may be accessed and modified by specifying the zero-based offset of the desired character after the string in curly braces.

Note: For backwards compatibility, you can still use array-brackets for the same purpose. However, this syntax is deprecated as of PHP 4.

Example 11-5. Some string examples

<?php
// Get the first character of a string
$str = 'This is a test.';
$first = $str{0};

// Get the third character of a string
$third = $str{2};

// Get the last character of a string.
$str = 'This is still a test.';
$last = $str{strlen($str)-1};

// Modify the last character of a string
$str = 'Look at the sea';
$str{strlen($str)-1} = 'e';

?>

From the PHP manual.

It's old syntax for characterwise string access.

Thanks for your help though, ++rating

An exception was thrown in Konfusius.exe: !! ace_lovegrove->rating: index out of bounds !!


Hmm... yeah, back to work.