what's that "->"

[jonex]

hi..
i sometimes see "->" in php codes.. what does this do??.. i tried to do some research but i just found out that it has something to do with objects.. nothin else.. the manual on php.net doesn't say anything about it..
anyone???

[theeper]

When used with the array() construct, => is a method for assigning a value to an array index. Take a look at this.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.array.php

[theeper]

Oops, I misread your post, not sure what -> is for.

[jonex]

yeah i know the double arrow (=>) but what about the single one (->) .. i want to script a some imap stuff and the example code on php.net for imap_fetch_overview is

if (is_array ($overview )) {
    reset ($overview);
    while (list ($key, $val) = each ($overview)) {
        print $val->msgno
            . " - " . $val->date
            . " - " . $val->subject
            . "\n";
    }
}

so what does this

$val->date

mean??

[barand]

Where an object, eg employee, has a property, eg name, then this is referenced by the notation

$employee->name

Some other OO languages use the "." notation (eg employee.name) whereas PHP uses the C++ style "->"

hth

[jmcneese]

it is used in calling internal methods of classes. as in:

$var = $class->method;

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.classobj.php

[jonex]

ok thyanks very much.. helped me alot understanding the code..

[lukemedway]

It can also be used in mysql like arrays... Instead it returns the results as an object.

$query = "SELECT * FROM table_name";
$result = mysql_query($query);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_object($result)) {

echo $row -> ID $row ->LastName $row -> etc;

}