-||- Coming from ASP -- syntax question

[sfullman]

Hi there,

I'm very grateful for the responsiveness of everyone on this forum. I'm coming up to speed on PHP from ASP rapidly.

One of thing that I realize is PHP has a much richer syntax that can get more done in fewer lines. So not only do I want to know PHP well, but I want to utilize the full power of the syntax.

Case in point: I always hated the following expression in ASP but there was no other way:

<% if valueOne = "something" then valueOne = "string A" else valueOne = "string B"
%>
(of course that's written in ASP).

Is there a shorter way of doing this in PHP?
I say that because the manual says you can do something "tricky" like this:

$a = ($b=5) + 4;
echo $a; //returns 9!
echo $b; //returns 5
so you've set two values while doing an arithmetic operation. That really interests me and I wonder if anyone can help with translating the ASP statement above.

Sam Fullman
Compass Point Media

[Anon]

i think the if/else statement is pretty much the same, not much shorter

if ($value==4) {
$value=$a;
} else {
$value=$b;
}

I really like the case expression to simplify mutliple if/elseif statements

if ($value==1) {
$value=$a;
} else if ($value=2) {
$value=$b;
} else if ....

becomes
case ($value==1) $value=$a;
case ($value==2) $value=$b;

other than that, I wouldn't think php is any less verbose...