Notice: Use of undefined constant Error

Namadoor

Hi,

I have recently upgraded my PHP version, and I noticed that my page is now littered with Notice: Use of undefined constant, and Notice: Use of undefined varible messages. I figured out how to fix the varible one, but not the constant one. When I do something like:

echo "$_COOKIE[username]";

It gives me an message saying something like "Notice: Use of undefined constant username - assumed 'username' in /var/www/html/varerror.php on line 21".

How do I correct this error?

Thank you for your time.

drew010

echo $_COOKIE['username'];

notice the ' ' surrounding username. since it is a string is should be quoted in the array. constants dont need to be quoted so it is assuming you have this somewhere in your script
define("username", "value");

but since that isnt there it says no such constant username. in general, all values in array indices should have ' ' around them unless they actually are constants, or are numeric values.

Namadoor

Okay, that seems to not give me the notice, however if I am to do something like: echo "You are logged in as $COOKIE['username']"; I get the error "Parse error: parse error, unexpected T_ENCAPSED_AND_WHITESPACE, expecting T_STRING or T_VARIABLE or T_NUM_STRING". Do you not use quotes around the string in the array when that varible is in another string? (For example, do this instead: echo "You are logged in as $COOKIE[username]"?)

Thanks for your help.

drew010

you still need the ' ' inside the array when you are echo'ing but if you want to include the array in the echo statement you need to put { } around it or escape it.

echo "You are logged in as {$_COOKIE['username']}.";

BuzzLY

When I need to include an array (which $COOKIE is) in a string, I do one of two things.

echo "You are logged on as " . $_COOKIE['username'] . ".";

 - or -

$username = $_COOKIE['username'];
echo "You are logged in as $username";

drew010

php.net shows bracketing arrays as a perfectly legitimate method of showing array values in echo strings,
here's the excertpt...

// You can also use arrays
$bar = array("value" => "foo");

echo "this is {$bar['value']} !"; // this is foo !

buzzly, is there a reason you recommend concatenation (which i hate doing for plain vars since it can get a little long and messy) and then assigning the array val to a single variable, and then echo'ing which is pretty much the same as bracketing the array, but with one more step,

i only ask cause a few people here have actually shown concatenation seemingly in correction to my method after i post it.