switching in a for loop with variables...

[GoSharks]

I'm a little rusty with PHP, and im trying to convert a series of variables that are currently characters into numbres. I have this code, and I'm having trouble getting it to work via trial and error. It is telling me "unexpected =" on the first case of the switch statement.

Is there perhaps a better way to do this? I'm looking to expand this out to convert 18 variables from letters to numbers. Thanks.

<?

$q1 = a;
$q2 = d;
		for ($i = 1; $i <= 2; $i++)
		{
		switch ("$.'q'.$i")
		{
			case a: "$.'q'.$i" = "1"; break;
			case b: "$.'q'.$i"="2"; break;
			case c: "$.'q'.$i"="3"; break;
			case d: "$.'q'.$i"="4"; break;
			case e: "$.'q'.$i"="5"; break;
			case f: "$.'q'.$i"="6"; break;
			case g: "$.'q'.$i"="7"; break;
			case h: "$.'q'.$i"="8"; break;
			case i: "$.'q'.$i"="9"; break;
			default: "$.'q'.$i"="0";
		}
		echo "$.'q'.$i";
		}
/?>

[Weedpacket]

Perhaps you'd be better using an array?

$letters_to_numbers = array('a'=>1, 'b'=>2, ..., 'i'=>9);

$q[1] = 'a';
$q[2] = 'd';
for($i=1; $i<=2; $i++)
{
  if(isset($letters_to_numbers[$q[$i]]))
      $q[$i] = $letters_to_numbers[$q[$i]];
  else
      $q[$i] = 0;
}

Something like that, anyway.