tricky one for smart person

[sfullman]

here's a question on recognizing not the value, but the VARIABLE passed. Here's a rough outline of what I want to do:

//I assign a value to a variable:
$variableName = 'variable VALUE';

//I call some function with the variable
some_function($variableName){

 global variableName?

 variableName = some new value

}

In otherwords, I know what the VALUE is that I passed, how can the function read the NAME of the variable I used to pass it? I would like to globalize the var name in the function, and change it directly inside the function.

Any ideas? I'm studying the PHP manual right now.

Sam Fullman
Compass Point Media

[Anon]

Why?

Why not just use the function to return a value to the variable that was the argument?

ex:

function ChangeValue ($variable) {

$variable = "whatever value you want";
return $variable;

}

$variableName = ChangeValue($variableName);

Voila! Value of variable changed.

[Anon]

Or you can also pass by reference.

Diego

[sfullman]

Thats not what I'm looking for. I want to RETURN either true or false like so:

$date = '7/2/02';
$errReport = checkDate($date);

(this is an error checking function for a date)

I just want to change the variable in the process in one function so that 7-2-02, 7/2/2002, 07/02/02, etc all get changed to 20020702, AND the return value is a 1 (good date for any of these examples) or a zero (and no change in the passed variable).

So your function wouldn't do that. I believe I need to know the NAME of the variable passed, declare it global, and then re-assign it, in this case into a standard date format.

This comes in handy 'cause $HTTP_POST_VARS are writeable and I want to be able to re-configure dates and times passed in a form.

Thanks for your help though.

Sam Fullman
Compass Point Media

[Anon]

I'm sorry, but thats retarded. In all reality, why don't you avoid this whole process and use your form to format your data. Instead of allowing people to free-form enter dates and times into text fields, use select boxes. When they post, you will always receive the data in an expected manner.

---

Here is an example of how to do what you want without knowing the name of the variable.

function ChangeValue ($variable) {
$returnArray = array();
//Send your value to a function that formats it how you like.
$propervar = SomeFormattingFunction($variable);
array_push($returnArray,$propervar);
//check to see if the new value is as same as the old value
if($propervar == $variable){
array_push($returnArray,0);
} else {
array_push($returnArray,1);
}
return $returnArray;
}

list($variableName,$retCode) = ChangeValue($variableName);

if($retCode){
print "Variable value was modified";
}