change string to variable name?

Anon

Hello, again.
my problem is (still) that I have sth. like this:

$test=5;
$name[1] = "test";

and I would like to get the value 5, but without using $test.
I have to use $name[1], which means that I have to get
the value of this field and regard the text string in there
as variable name!

would be ** in C :-)

any ideas?

I tried:
$$name[1]
"$" . $name[1]
"$" . "$name[1]"

.... and 100 other ideas..

IF anybody knows how to do this.. please help me.

Thank you so much,

Chris

kparker

Depending on the version of PHP, you may have to pull the value into a scalar variable first:

$indirect = $name[1];
echo $$indirect;

Anon

Hi Kirk,

thanks for your help, but it still prints out $test instead of the value of $test.
(Actually the script is running on PHP 4)

Do you have any other ideas?

Many thanks,

Chris

Anon

Hi Folks,

${$name[1]}

thank you all.. I received the working solution from Renate. Many thanks

Chris

kparker

Your solution of course works, but I wonder why my longer version doesn't for you? It certainly does here--and you can trace it a step at a time. I.e. if you shorten it to

$test=5;
$indirect = "test";
echo $$indirect;

does it still not work for you?