Troubles with Array

[psikoscweek]

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm working on a quiz engine in PHP and I have everything working without problems save for the fact that I cannot an array to work for what I need it to work.

The array should store the answer's that the user inputs during the quiz.

$val_temp = explode("|",$val);
$answers += $val_temp[0];
if ($num ==  0)
{$answernum = array();}
else
{$answernum[] = $val_temp[1];}

is my array coding, it should init the array when $num is 0, at the beginning, and each quiz question add the answer to the array $answernum. But it doesnt. Instead, the array is empty. If I put:

$val_temp = explode("|",$val);
$answers += $val_temp[0];
if ($num ==  0)
{$answernum = array();}
else
{$answernum[$num] = $val_temp[1];}

only the last answer is stored into the array, and everything else is erased like the array is getting reinitialized. I don't see why that would be happening.

any help at all would be greatly appreciated, again.

[YAOMK]

That is happening because you are not looping through your arrays.

[psikoscweek]

ok, not to sound stupid. but how would i got about fixing that? Is there a tutorial or... anything else I can look into? Im not sure if I stated this before or not, but all of the above is within a "if else" loop. If I need to post more source let me know.

[hotet]

To refering to an element in a array by doing $answernum[], is using the array's internal pointer, which basicly only changes when used in a loop of some kind.

Tho I can't see why you can't use your solution (using a variable that's keeping track of the position in the array), it would be the best for you.

[psikoscweek]

alright gotcha on how its not working with $answernum[]. But using $answernum[$num] should work right? but it doesnt. All it does is keep track of the last answer put into the array. So if the last question was 2 and the user chose 3, $answernum[2] would equal to 3 but when the user goes to the third question and choses 4, $answernum[3] would equal 4 but $answernum[2] is then equal to nothing. I dont understand it.

thanks though, for your answers.

[YAOMK]

Have a look at this example:

$a= array();
$b= array('a','b','c','d','e','f');

foreach($b as $key => $value)
{
$a[] = $value;
}

You may be also interested in looking into array_merge()

[psikoscweek]

ok. here is my problem currently. On each pass its erasing the previous contents in the array. I figure I need some way of storing the previous before it loops again.

Here is what I have:

$answernum = $HTTP_POST_VARS["answernum"];
$val_temp = explode("|",$val);
$answers += $val_temp[0];
if ($num ==  0)
{$answernum = array();}
else
{
$answernum[$num] = $val_temp[1];
}

and

<input type="hidden" name="answernum" value="<?=$answernum?>">

and everything works except for questions that have 10 or more answer choices it only stores the first character and not bot. so, 10 becomes 1 and 11 becomes 1.

any suggestions, or am I just going about this the wrong way?

[YAOMK]

when you say each pass, do you mean that the following code is contained within a loop?

$answernum = $HTTP_POST_VARS["answernum"];
$val_temp = explode("|",$val);
$answers += $val_temp[0];
if ($num ==  0)
{$answernum = array();}
else
{
$answernum[$num] = $val_temp[1];
} 

I'm sorry, but I'm not 100% sure of what you are doing, try posting the part of the script in which the variables are initialized and the loop (if existent) is present.

[psikoscweek]

ok...

if (empty($HTTP_POST_VARS["source"])) {
?>
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="4;URL=scripts.phtml">
<p>ERROR: incorrect start.</p>
<?
}
else {
$num = $HTTP_POST_VARS["questnum"];
$answers = $HTTP_POST_VARS["answers"];
$val = $HTTP_POST_VARS["val"];
$answernum = $HTTP_POST_VARS["answernum"];
$val_temp = explode("|",$val);
$answers += $val_temp[0];
if ($num ==  0)
{$answernum = array();}
else
{
$answernum[$num] = $val_temp[1];
}
$quests = getTagContent("question", $left);
$count = count($quests);
if ($count > $num) {
?>
<form name="navigate" action="<?=$PHP_SELF?>" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="act" value="exec">
<input 	type="hidden" name="id" value="<?=$HTTP_POST_VARS["id"]?>">
<?
	$texts = getTagContent("text", $quests[$num]);
	echo "<p><b>".($num+1).".</b> ";
	printexec($texts, 0);
	echo "</p>\n";
	echo "<table>";
	$variants = getTag("variant", $quests[$num]);
	$val = ExtractAttribute($variants[0], "variant", "val");
	printradio($variants);
	echo "</tr></table>";
	echo "<br>\n";
	echo "<p>Question <b>".($num+1)." </b> out of <b>".($count).".</b> ";
	for ($i = 1; $i < ($num+1); $i++)
	{echo "<br> Previous answer - " .($answernum[$i])."";}
	$variants = getTagContent("variant", $quests[$num]);
	printscript($variants);
?>
<br><p><a href="" onclick="button_check(); return false;">Next</a></p>
<input type="hidden" name="questnum" value="<?=$num+1?>">
<input type="hidden" name="answers" value="<?=$answers?>">
<input type="hidden" name="source" value="<?=$source?>">
<input type="hidden" name="answernum" value="<?=$answernum?>">
</form>
<?
}

There is the majority of the code. Again, thanks for your time.