[RESOLVED] Echo Help

RDx321

Hello guys, I have a page that has a layout that includes the content within it.

I am trying to echo a field on the page with the layout that the value of the field is found on the page that is included.

So I have this on the very top of the page
<?php echo $field;>

Now at the bottom of the page I define what field is.

<?php $field=bob;?>

For some reason the script is not echoing it. I think its because of the order that i have it setup, having the echo on the top and the define at the bottom.

How can i get this to work?

Stryker250

You have it the wrong way round. You are trying to echo $field at the very top of the script, but $field has no value to it. And defining $field after you echo it does not help any. If you swap your order it will work. i.e. Define $field at the top of the script and echo it at the bottom.

Ashley_Sheridan

PHP is a scripted language, so it executes things in the order that it sees them, unlike a compiled language, where you can declare a class after you use the class in the code, and the compiler sorts it all out.

RDx321

Is their a way around it? Because the echo has to happen on the head part of the html, the content that gets include into the PHP script that has the field defined is on the body of the page. So I can't change the order. Can I do some type of workaround?

Ashley_Sheridan

The only workaround is to define the variable before you try to use it. Why does the variable have to be defined at the bottom of the page? If you want it to work, you are going to have to do some restructuring.

laserlight

Ashley Sheridan wrote:
PHP is a scripted language, so it executes things in the order that it sees them, unlike a compiled language, where you can declare a class after you use the class in the code, and the compiler sorts it all out.

That is not accurate reasoning, actually. The use of a compiler does not mean that the language must mandate that identifiers can be used before being declared, and run time interpretation does not mean that everything must be declared before use (e.g., even in PHP, one can call a function that is defined after the function call).

The point here is simply the rules of PHP: the variable $field is uninitialised, so it takes on the default value of an empty string (with an E_NOTICE error reported). By shifting the initialisation of $field to before the point where it is used, it is correctly initialised and thus takes on the expected value.