Question

Could anyone please explain to me why the following line of code prints out true?

$a = "string";

if(isset($a['error'])) echo true; else echo false;

When I do a function call, I return the expected data if it worked properly, or return array("error" => $error);

Then on receiving the returned data I check if isset($var[‘error’]) and if its not then I know I received some expected data.

I would also appreciate if you could advice me if this a good or bad way of handling data between function calls? And if there is a better “good practice” for this.

Answer 1

Well, this is some of PHP misbehaviors, which luckily has been fixed in some recent version.

You can address a single character in a string using the same square braces used to address an array element.

'error' evaluates to 0 and then you have got $a[0] which is set.

to fix that you have to check if $a is array first