Referencing a local variable in a global variable defined in a config.inc file

PENDRAG0N

I use a conf.inc.php to define some Global variables since I roll out several copies of the same code over and over and need an easy place to edit some basic string variables.

My question is if someone knows how to reference a local variable (local to where the Global is called) in the Global variable.

simplified example of what works:
conf.inc.php file:
$GLOBALS['favcolor'] = "My favorite color is %s.";

Some other php file where I call that Global:
include_once("../conf.inc.php");
$color = "green";
printf($GLOBALS['favcolor'], $color);
//output is: My favorite color is green.

In the above example I would much prefer defining the Global variable in conf.inc.php as:
$GLOBALS['favcolor'] = "My favorite color is $color.";

...but this of course references a local variable in conf.inc.php named $color not in the second PHP file where the Global is called.

What is the syntax in the Global declaration so that the variable $color references the local variable in the second php file?

NogDog

If the variable $color is not yet set when the config file is included, then it does not matter what syntax you use, since $color is not yet defined. I suppose you could define the string with a literal "$" in it (either using single quotes around the string or escaping the "$" with a back-slash) and then [man]eval/man-ing, but as the saying goes: "If eval() is the answer, then you're probably asking the wrong question."

Probably a more robust and portable technique would be to define a function in your config file:

function favColor($color)
{
   return "My favorite color is $color.";
}

Then in your main script:

require_once 'conf.inc.php';
$color = 'green';
echo favColor($color);

PENDRAG0N

Thanks for the response. I did try eval() but not with an escaped variable declaration so I will try that.

I had tried: eval($green) {this was evaluating in the conf.inc.php scope}
I assume you are saying I could try: eval(\$green)

-PEN

NogDog

No, what I meant as far as eval() (shudder) goes is:

config file:

$GLOBALS['color'] = 'My favorite color is $color'; // note use of single quotes
$GLOBALS['flavor'] = "My favorite flavor is \$flavor"; // note escaped $ in double quotes

main script:

include 'config.php';
$color = 'green';
$flavor = 'vanilla';
eval('echo "' . $GLOBALS['color'] . '";');
eval('echo "' . $GLOBALS['flavor''] . '";');

Ugly, inefficient, and a possible security issue if the values being used in the eval() statement could be compromised (probably not an issue in this case).

PENDRAG0N

Thanks - I will try that. If this works the benefit would be the ability to have disclaimers etc spread out over several other files that load the non-local-variable info from a global value giving way to multi-language conf.inc files and being able to not have to do mass edits over several files.

-PEN

PENDRAG0N

It took a bit of fiddling since I didn't want to merely echo the output but assign the output to a variable.

eval('$output="' . $GLOBALS['color'] . '";');

worked fine.

Thanks a lot for the help! This was not an easy issue to search for help on.