populating arrays from db using $$ to get array name

[biggus]

Hello,

I'm pulling dropdown list values from a db and want to use only one query, so I've got the following (which isn't working...PHP4.1.1):

while (!$result->EOF) {
$tmp=$result->fields[3]."_dropdown_array";
$$tmp[count($$tmp)]=$result->fields[5];
$result->MoveNext();
}

I've already declared the arrays, ie:

$APPLICATION_DESIGN_dropdown_array=array();

and a value for fields[3] is "APPLICATION_DESIGN" To debug, "print $$tmp" printed out "Array", as expected, but count($APPLICATION_DESIGN_dropdown_array) remains 0, even though there are 10 rows with this in field 3. Any ideas? By the way, I use ADODB classes.

Thanks,
Biggus

[biggus]

OK...while I'd still like to know what I was doing wrong when using $$, I changed my approach and used a multidim. array instead:

while (!$result->EOF) {
if(!is_array($lists[$result->fields[3]])){$lists[$result->fields[3]]=array();}
$lists[$result->fields[3]][count($lists[$result->fields[3]])]=$result->fields[5];
$result->MoveNext();
}

Now I just have to cycle through the $lists["APPLICATION_DESIGN"] array to populate the dropdown.

It's just that the $$ syntax looks sooo cool!

Biggus