OMFG this is an easy question

[Mnesarchus]

Hey, I'm really, really new to PHP and have two questions that I'm sure you can answer very quickly. I tried searching but since I dont really know what the name of what I'm looking for is, I found nothing.

1. How do I pull the URL of the current page and set it as a variable?

$whatever = ??

2. How do I take only a certain few characters from a variable? In Actionscript it's called 'slice'.

longvariable.slice(0,3) = short variable, so I'll only get the first four characters in a variable.

Thanks, sorry for the asshat questions

[drawmack]

How about a brief introduction to using php.net?

1. How do I pull the URL of the current page and set it as a variable?

$whatever = ??

Step 1) consider what you're looking for. I see three likely key words here - variable, URL and script. So let's go to http://www.php.net/manual/en and see what these turn up.

I clicked on variables and then predefined variables and I got this page.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/language.variables.predefined.php

I want server information (i.e. the url of the script) so I clicked on $_SERVER.

I found some interesting stuff here:
HTTP_HOST, PHP_SELF and QUERY_STRING looks like I could do this
$my_url = $SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . $SERVER['PHP_SELF'] . '?' . $_SERVER['QUERY_STRING'];

2. How do I take only a certain few characters from a variable? In Actionscript it's called 'slice'. 

longvariable.slice(0,3) = short variable, so I'll only get the first four characters in a variable. 

The general computer science terminology for a slice is called a subscring. Search for that on php.net and see what turns up.

[Mnesarchus]

Thanks draw, thats what I needed.

I didn't even know there was a manual.:p