array assignment shifting

[DrMartinus]

Hi,

I have the following code (simplified):

$j=1;
while ($j<=10){
$array[$j]="item".$j;
$j++;
}

Now, if I want to read the array items, then

$array[0] => item1
...
$array[9] => item10

This seems strange. Is this the right behaviour of PHP? Shouldn't $array[1] carry item1???

[archangel_617b]

In short: no.

Indeces in PHP (eg in $array[0], 0 is the index) are a distance from the front of the array. So the first element in the array is 0 elements away, right? The second is 1 element from the front and the 10 element is 9 from the front.

On another note, there are many iteration constructs (loops) in PHP. The most important here is the for loop. You can read all about it in the manual and it would look something like this:

// this will give $array[0] => 'item0' but you can add 1 to $j when making the string
for($j = 0; $j < 10; $j++)
    $array[$j] = 'item'.$j;    // or = 'item'.($j + 1);

[Weedpacket]

Originally posted by DrMartinus
Hi,
This seems strange. Is this the right behaviour of PHP? Shouldn't $array[1] carry item1???

How are you finding reading the values of your arrays? I run your simplified code, call print_r() on the resulting array, and I get

Array
(
    [1] => item1
    [2] => item2
    [3] => item3
    [4] => item4
    [5] => item5
    [6] => item6
    [7] => item7
    [8] => item8
    [9] => item9
    [10] => item10
)

...In other words, just what you'd expect.