Question

Here is a bit of code that displays: ‘varname: varvalue’ in a browser. It is used by calling the vc(‘varname’); or vc(array(‘multiple’,’varnames’));

I first tried writing:

if (gettype($$var_string) == ('string' || 'boolean' || 'integer' || 'double')){}

however this didn’t work. The second group simplifies to true, and it always passed the conditional check.

So, I wrote out each check separately. I’m new to coding, I’m sure there’s an easier way, not sure what it would be. I haven’t had any luck searching here or google. (probably not using the right jargon). Thanks in advance. – Mike

Oh, this is PHP, btw. The problem in question applies to any language thou.

define('LB', '<br />');
$var1 = 5;
$var2 = array('mike', 'lewis', 'is', 'awesome');

function vc($var_string) {
    if (!is_array($var_string)){
    $var_string = array($var_string);
    }
foreach ($var_string as $var_string){
    global $$var_string;
    if (    (gettype($$var_string) == 'string') || 
            (gettype($$var_string) == 'boolean') || 
            (gettype($$var_string) == 'integer') || 
            (gettype($$var_string) == 'double') ) {
        print('<strong>'. $var_string . ': </strong>' . $$var_string . LB);        
    } elseif (  (gettype($$var_string) == 'array') || 
                (gettype($$var_string) == 'object') || 
                (gettype($$var_string) == 'resource')){
        print('<strong>' . $var_string . ': </strong>');
        print_r($$var_string);
        print(LB);
    }
} 
}

vc('var1');
vc('var2');
vc(array('var1', 'var2'));

Answer 1

You can do something like this:

if( in_array($variable_to_test, Array("option1", "option2", "option3"))) {
    // ...
}