.= undefined variable

Chucky

When I start up a new variable using the .= operator, it screws up by telling me theres an undefined variable.

I do this...

$body .= "blah blah blah...";

echo $body;

I use the concatonations out of habit, and on my previous server it worked fine, however, on this new server it doesn't seem to work. Is there perhaps a setting in the PHP.ini file, or perhaps a setting in apache?

Thanks.

saronoff

In newer versions there seem to be stricter guidelines on undefined verses defined variables. All you would have to do to get around it would be to add a line like:

$body = "";

or test before concatinating:

if(isset($body))
$body .= ...;
else
$body = ...;

Chucky

yeah, i could, although it is quite irritating. the operator .= usually creates the variable for you if its not there, it seems wierd that it would do it on the different servers running the sames apache versions and php versions.

there isn't perhaps a setting on the apache and/or php that will change this?

Weedpacket

There is, it's called [man]error_reporting[/man]. The reason you get the Notice is because it's risky to use variables when you haven't yet given them a value.

$body .= 'foo';

is equivalent to

$body = $body . 'foo';

In other words, take the current value of $body and tack 'foo' on the end. If you haven't given $body a value yet, then depending on where you're doing this, someone hitting the script could stick something into $body you don't want stuck in there.

It's just defensive programming.