PHP Associative Array - php

Question

PHP
<?php
$truck['Toyota']=Tundra;
$truck['Nissan']=Titan;
$truck['Dodge']=Ram;
print "<br />Toyota makes the".$truck['Toyota']."<br />";
print "Nissan makes the".$truck['Nissan']."<br />";
print "Dodge makes the".$truck['Dodge']."<br />";
?>
I am learning PHP by tutorial:
An Associative Array is an array in which the keys are associated with values.
And, when viewed in a browser...
Toyota makes the Tundra
Nissan makes the Titan
Dodge makes the Ram
NOT SO!
I get:
Toyota makes theR
Nissan makes theR
Dodge makes theR
Can anyone explain?

Answer 1

OK so everyone has pointed out that you need to quote your strings, but that's not the real problem.
(The reason that your code is not throwing an error right now is because the strings you forgot to quote are treated as PHP "bare strings" -- basically an undefined constant whose name is used as the value, you should not use/rely on this.)
Now for the real problem: it looks like you have already defined $truck to be a string further up in your code, so when you try to read/write to it as if it were an associative array, you are really read/writing the first character in that originally defined string (the string key your are using is converted to an int). Since the last assignment is $truck['Dodge'] = "Ram", the first character in $truck is changed to an "R", and that's what you are then seeing in your output.
You should (and this case need to) define $truck as an array before you start using it like one:
$truck = array();
$truck['Toyota'] = "Tundra";
$truck['Nissan'] = "Titan";
$truck['Dodge'] = "Ram";
Even better, for best practices, you should use a different variable name for the first $truck (string) and the second $truck (array) so it's not confusing:
// some code that I imagine comes before your example
$truck = "Ford F150";
// ...
$trucks = array();
$trucks['Toyota'] = "Tundra";
$trucks['Nissan'] = "Titan";
$trucks['Dodge'] = "Ram";
print "<br />Toyota makes the".$trucks['Toyota']."<br />";
print "Nissan makes the".$trucks['Nissan']."<br />";
print "Dodge makes the".$trucks['Dodge']."<br />";

Answer 2

You need quotes around string literals. E.g.:
<?php
$truck['Toyota'] = "Tundra";
$truck['Nissan'] = "Titan";
$truck['Dodge'] = "Ram";
A good idea is to enable error reporting, so you will be told about these issues by the php interpreter. Stick this line at the top of your script (next after <?php):
error_reporting(E_ALL);

Answer 3

It looks like you're using constants Tundra Titan and Ram instead of strings. Have you defined those constants elsewhere in your code?

Answer 4

$truck['Toyota']="Tundra";
$truck['Nissan']="Titan";
$truck['Dodge']="Ram";
I think its a syntax error.

Answer 5

you have to put your strings inside quotation marks:
$truck['Toyota']='Tundra';
$truck['Nissan']='Titan';
$truck['Dodge']='Ram';

Answer 6

I don't know if the post has been edited by Stack Overflow or it lost them but your values are not wrapped in single quotations..
Also, just a piece of advice; concatenation is only required on single quote strings you can wrap your variables in braces to save that 0.00001 msec :)

Answer 7

Enable error reporting and reduce the code to more quickly fix if you've found the error:
<?php
# display errors and show all warnings and errors, that's helpful:
ini_set('display_errors', 1); error_reporting(~0);
$truck['Toyota']=Tundra;
$truck['Nissan']=Titan;
$truck['Dodge']=Ram;
echo "<br />\n";
# when doing the same thing multiple times, take foreach:
foreach ($truck as $manufacturer => $model)
{
echo $manufacturer, ' makes the ', $model, ".<br />\n";
}